Sweat and socialism

I should warn you that this post contains graphic descriptions of perspiration, my perspiration to be precise. It's rather a personal thing, but I'm putting it out there to demonstrate a point. If you're going to go "Eww, gross, sweat! You sweat! You're disgusting!" you should probably leave this post and go elsewhere.

With the end of adolescence, my body chemistry changed, which affected the chemical composition of my sweat. My sweat reacted chemically with my antiperspirant (which never fully stopped my perspiration because I am, as Sars from Tomato Nation puts it, a very dewy lass) to leave permanent stains in the armpits of my shirts. It took me a long time to diagnose this - I thought applying more antiperspirant would help, I though a clear antiperspirant would help (it made things worse), and I didn't realize that it was the specific chemistry of the antiperspirant and my specific body chemistry that did it. I had to do a lot of experiments and buy a lot of different antiperspirants before I could get it under control. (And no, I can't just skip antiperspirant, because I sweat even more without and would be walking around with wet armpits 24/7.) I also had to do a lot of experiments and try a lot of laundry products and methods before I could figure out how to wash my shirts so as to prevent staining. The best solution found to date has been to use Drysol twice a week, Secret soft solid every day, then treat every armpit of every shirt with Spray and Wash stain stick when I take the shirt off (whether or not there's any visible staining), then wash every shirt in warm water (or hot if it can take it), never cold, and never ever ever put it a shirt in the dryer.

But in the time it took me to figure out this forumla, I managed to irreparably stain 27 shirts. Twenty-seven shirts, all stained so badly that charities wouldn't take them. They had big crusty white or yellow stains in the armpits, highly visible, you couldn't even see the original colour of the shirt under the stains, they could not be removed even by professionals, and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it because the problem was my specific personal body chemistry. No one in the world, could have seen this coming. No one in the world could have told me the specific method to keep it under control. I had to do trial and error with all the many products and methods and ideas available until I stumbled upon a method that worked. There was no other option, and all the virtue in the world would not have prevented it.

This is why I strongly believe that our social safety net needs to be strengthened.

This problem originated through no fault of my own. It took some time to fix, and during the time it took to fix it I had to keep throwing resources at it. Different laundry detergents, different stain removers, different antiperspirants, the occasional round of dry-cleaning, internet access for research, and replacement shirts whenever one would get so highly visibly stained that I just couldn't wear it in public any more. Fortunately, I can afford all this, but someone who's on social assistance could not. They get so little money that there is no way they could make it work to keep buying new laundry products and antiperspirants - and because it's a matter of specific chemistry, the cheapest store brand or whatever's on sale won't do, you have to buy specific brands. And even shopping at the Amity, constantly replacing one's shirts would become a burden if you only get $500 a month.

So then they'd be stuck with nothing but stained shirts. Every single shirt they own would have these huge, visible, crusty sweat stains in the armpits, even after diligent laundering. This would hinder them in every area of life. People would look on them with scorn and disgust, because they look disgusting and dirty. They would have even more trouble finding a job - could you imagine going to a job interview with large visible armpit stains? People would probably think that they have some developmental and functional disability and are therefore incapable of taking proper care of themselves, and not treat them as functional and intelligent human beings. And all this because the social safety net does not provide enough money to do the trial and error necessary to solve the problem.

Now you're thinking "But this is such an obscure problem! I have never in my life heard of perspiration reacting chemically with antiperspirant to stain clothing!" Which is my point exactly. It's such an obscure problem, no one could see it coming. Our lawmakers probably didn't see it coming when they planned our social assistance rates, and no one can expect them to have thought of it. But there are probably hundreds more problems like this that people face and no one would have ever seen coming, but still require money to fix. I just want to live in a society where everyone can do what they need to do to figure out how to fix these small, unexpected problems that will take over your whole life if you don't address them. Social assistance doesn't need to make it possible to buy cars and plasma TVs and designer clothes, put people should still be able to buy a stain stick and a different antiperspirant and a new shirt to replace the one that has been stained irreparably, rather than being sentenced to the indignity of walking around with armpit stains forever.