Ep 213: RANKed Which Ball Deodorant is best?
It’s tough out here for your thick friends. Pray for them it’s hot.
Chafe is bad, and when it is paired with sweat, the summer swamp can get particularly uncomfortable especially in those cracks and crevices. I always liked how Bear Grylls said crevices “crev ass es”. It’s so choice and really captures my main concern related to the topic. Big cracks.
While everyone has a crack, men, today we are tackling a summer concern that is as close to home as we can really experience.
Fighting Swamp Crack
Summer chafe really squares up in the places we least wanted it. Swamp crack, pit stank, thigh thrush. But for men, we know that one zone is dreaded for the chafe to fire up. When the crotchal gets wild things are tough. It’s when the berries start to get wrapped up in the chafe that things get really unfortunate.
As long as men have had junk and the sun has made you sweat, men have been doing stuff to try and deal with the sweat and the chaff that happens downstairs. There is very little detail throughout history on how to deal with this particular problem because it is particularly taboo, or at least it has been for some time.
Crotch sweat really falls into the category of things people don’t want to talk about. You can test it very easily. Next time you are making small talk with your friend, just drop a comment about the nature of how the summer sun has impacted your testicular zone. See how they handle it. Because it was taboo, there is not a lot of record about how to deal with this in the course of history. Looking at the lifestyle and choices of people who live in particularly hot and sweaty parts of our world can help key in on paths forward.
It is well established in these parts of the world that there are two key ways to improve your life in this way. Cleanliness and flowiness. Cleanliness, in that as often as you can remove the sweat, it’ll cut down on chafe. I would add, you have to have proper drying techniques. If you don’t dry off well, things are bad. That was my problem recently. When you get wet and then sit in the wet, things get randy quick.
Flowiness refers to dressing like some hipster mom who’s prepping for pool day. Flowy pants and baggy clothes. This helps stay cool and reduces opportunity for chafe. I will push back on the flowiness. One tactic is using the clothes to create an anti chafe barrier between you and the other thick parts of you. Tight drawers that go down longer than you hoped are actually a great past forward.
A Brief History of Fighting Sweat
Let’s take cultural scroll of the options before we explore our landscape today.
The ancient Greeks and Romans understood that clothes caused a lot of problems in the chafing area. The Greeks would famously train and exercise in the nude to reduce the friction and resulting chafing. That would do a lot, but it didn’t cover everything. As we all know, sweat collects primarily or first of all in the “crevasses”, thank you Mr Grylls, and so they would employ balms and other methods to reduce this concern.
Greek and Roman athletes would lube up their bodies with olive oil to help with this problem and if you think they didn’t hit up the nethers with it, you know they had to have. Things that decrease friction, decrease chafing.
One trend is clear, while there was no shortage of ways written to deal with sweat, none of them really sought to address crotch and ball sog and chafe.
While the Greeks turned to olive oil, as it was readily available to the area, other cultures turned to fat and animal tallow to lube up in the heat. I have to imagine that all this oil and fat did the opposite of preventing sunburn too. In fact, some treatments that are akin to the oil and fat method in modern day find their rest in petroleum jelly, or when the chafe is fierce enough bag balm.
I gotta say, in my thick days as a yard boy in the Montana sun, some petroleum jelly did a lot to bail me out of a particularly sweaty shift. They simultaneously lubricated and soothed the chafing skin while locking out moisture which could further complicate things.
While we are here, there are a few salves and rinses or astringents that were used that were focused less on lubricating the chaff, and more on the relief of the thing.
Witch Hazel was used by indigenous cultures to sooth burned skin and reduce sweating. Apple cider vinegar, which nowadays I think has made a resurgence, was rubbed in antiquity underneath arms and feet, or for our purposes in the cracks and crevices killing odor causing bacteria and providing a drying sensation. Others would infuse the wax and lard with chamomile or calendula or black tea or aloe.
A variety of things would be mixed into the bath, including a number of salts, coffee, tea, and oils. This was done with the thought that it would close or shrink up the pores, resulting in less sweating, resulting in less wet, resulting in less friction, resulting in less chafe.
You have to play the long game sometimes to get things done. While this is all about keeping clean and lubing up, there is one more tried and tested method of drying.
Ancient Egyptians and Romans are recorded as using alum powder, naturally occurring potassium alum to both constrict sweat ducts and kill odor. For a long time, this was the very technology that pretty much every antiperspirant used. Rubbing rocks on the cracks to help things along.
Lycopodium powder, which is what we call it, helps keep things smooth and dry as well. It is made from the dried spores of clubmoss plants. People from times past would rub the dried moss on themselves to help prevent moisture. Turns out, it was also pretty flammable, so keep that in note before you powder up. It’s flammable because it is a fine powder and is actually often used by firebreathers for a dragon’s breath effect.
Natural home remedies written about note cornstarch and arrowroot. I will say from my survey into the scene, arrowroot though something I didn’t know about, appeared often in the products I have sampled. I should note though, I think cornstarch is a REALLY bad move. You know when you order a pizza from a Little Caesars and the bottom is just dusted and crusted with the cornstarch. Well if the grease gets involved in that and you get water introduced to it, it is chaos out here. So the thought that I accidentally make a gluten free pizza crust in my crack when it’s hot out is not what I’m looking for.
Related to this, there are records of Romans using coal or and combining it with oils and fats to help the sweat and friction issue. I think coal is also an amazing choice. That had to have interacted well when you started to sweat and all of a sudden your armpits are stained black.
Similarly, chalk can be used to help keep things dry. What’s weird is, this is a pretty modern thing, being employed at the turn of the 20th century by weight lifters and gymnasts. In ancient times, chalk was eaten more often than used topically as they believed it had benefits to digestion. What did have a greater use for absorption of moisture purposes was talc. In fact, of all the options, this is one of the most written about and discussed methods of odor elimination, and absorbing moisture.
Prior to the 1900’s talcum powder was the primary means of fighting chafe with odor elimination and sweat absorption. It was made from mineral talc, and was often very finely crushed into a powder. It was more widely embraced and discussed, because it had this sophistication of dusting the talc on. While anyone could use it, talcum powder marketed women primarily.
Again, not many ads calling for men to talc up their taint. At the time, men not having body odor was perceived as feminine. Interestingly, this powder COULD be toxic. Turns out talc and asbestos are mined often from similar or nearby sources. Cross contamination or mixing of the minerals could cause there to be cancer causing agents in the talcum powder. Also because it was often dusted on, and as a result could easily be breathed by the one looking to fight chafe, it could be hazardous to one's health.
This is why there was such a push toward corn starch based powders.
And so… today, with a brief understanding of the background of deodorizing powders out of the way, we need to look at some of the options, primarily presented to men and their effectiveness as we dive into another RANKed Anti Ball Chaffing edition.
RANKed Ball Deoderants
First, let’s meet the contestants:
Manscaped Crop Preserver, Ballsy Ball Guard Liquid Powder, Dr Squatch Ball Barrier, Hume Supernatural, Super Fresh Man for Down There Cream, Happy Nuts, Fresh Balls Lotion, Monkey Butt Nut Powder, Chassis Men Care, Old Spice Total Body, Mando Body Deodorant, Every Man Jack Body Deodorant, Happy Sack Ball Cream, Blue Balls.
The tests include:
Hand on test. How has it treated me in day to day use?
Smell: What is the sniff factor?
The skid mark test: How much residue is left on your underpants?
Friction test: How effective is it at fighting chaffing?
Pizza planet corn meal monkey test: How does it react with our sweat?
The RESULTS!
Manscaped Crop Preserver= 19
Ballsy Ball Guard Liquid Powder= 15
Dr Squatch Ball Barrier=15.5
Hume Supernatural= 17.5
Super Fresh Man for Down There Cream= 15.5
Happy Nuts= 19
Fresh Balls Lotion= 14.5
Monkey Butt Nut Powder= 13
Chassis Man Care= 14
Old Spice Total Body= 18
Mando Body Deo= 14.5
Every Man Jack Body Deo = 15
Happy Sack Ball Love Cream= 15
Blue Balls= 19
And the winner(s) are:
MANSCAPED CROP PRESERVER, HAPPY NUTS, BLUE BALLS
