Hygienic Horror
story by Jackson Roberts, photos by Tyler Diltz, design by Rayne Schmidlkofer
Imagine sitting down in class and the person who sits next to you has not showered or applied deodorant in days. The musty stench creeping over in your direction as you are now to deal with this smell for the next hour or two. Or you could be in the gym and the sweatiest person imaginable is using each machine without cleaning it. Maybe you’re even in public in a line and that one person behind you just couldn’t cover their sneeze with their arm and now you have got germs all over you. Are you uncomfortable yet?
All of these are instances of poor hygienic practices. Don’t be like these people.
The Good, The Bad and The Smelly
Good hygiene is something that everyone should strive to include in their lives if not already applied. There are numerous reasons why personal hygiene is important to keep in mind, both for yourself and to the benefit of all those around you.
Registered Nurse Kelly Bauer of Student Health Services (SHS) brings up the importance of your bodily hygiene by highlighting how essential it is to do something even as simple as washing your hands.
“Body hygiene is important to prevent infection and the spread of disease,” Bauer says. “Especially washing your hands. Your hands touch your food, they touch your eyes, you might rub your nose. You’re using the bathroom. You should wash your hands after everything that I just mentioned.”
Some people may not always have access to a sink or soap for washing their hands, but there are other effective ways to still keep your mitts clean without soap and water.
“You can use the 60% alcohol gel and that is effective as well,” Bauer says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s antibacterial soap. It works equally well. The important thing though is to make sure that you use soap and wash your hands and scrub all surfaces for at least 20 seconds and then rinse.”
Hygiene specifically for college students can be an issue. Students are likely living on their own for the first time and are even at some disadvantages when it comes to keeping themselves and their spaces clean. It can be very difficult to slow the spread of germs, especially in such public spaces.
“College students, a lot of them live in very tight quarters, so they’re sharing spaces. They are using their phones, they are using their keyboards, which are high carriers of germs. So it’s really important that we wash our hands frequently,” Bauer says.
Freshman Business Entrepreneurship Major Chloe Killian touched on the fact that a good hygiene routine can benefit you in a couple other ways. “It’s professional for a workplace and it’s good to take care of yourself and it’s good for your mental health as well,” Killian says. Freshman law and justice major William Busche added onto what Killian said while also speaking on the importance of hygiene in a social space. “Especially for someone who is active, if you smell bad and you're trying to make friends at college, not going to happen,” Busche says.
A Clean Routine
There can be major consequences that are caused by bad hygiene not only for yourself in your daily life but for the others around you too. Bauer spoke on some of those outcomes when a good hygienic routine is not applied.
“Getting sick more often, other people getting other people sick, missing classes, missing work, missing practice or games. Going home and seeing your friends and family and getting them sick. There’s a lot of negatives,” Bauer says. “About 1.8 million children in the world die from infections that are spread by unclean hands. A lot of that obviously is not in the United States but it's just the most effective way to spread infection.”
Both Killian and Busche spoke on their daily hygiene routines, with Killian’s looking a little like this. “In the morning I will brush my teeth and wash my face and at night I’ll shower and that's every day, obviously apply deodorant, perfume, make sure my face is clean and lotioned and I smell good,” Busche says, “I wake up, take my shower, after my shower I’ll wash my face with a face cleanser. Then I will wash my face with a different soap. I put some moisturizer on after, then some deodorant and sometimes some Vaseline on my lips and head off to class.”
For students who may struggle with some of these routines or bad body odor, try to build those habits into your life as you will find it will benefit you in many ways. Nurse Bauer listed a few more ways to prevent lingering body odor while in your daily life.
“The best thing you can do is to take daily showers and [use] deodorant,” says Bauer. “Deodorant, antiperspirant, whatever you're comfortable with wearing is very important to apply… keeping your clothes clean and keeping your spaces clean and less smelly.”
