https://fortune.com/2023/10/27/unilever-deodorant-personal-care-hygiene-wfh-return-to-work/
Among those changes was the lesser time spent showering, wearing fresh clothes, and in some cases, even brushing teeth,
https://fortune.com/2023/10/27/unilever-deodorant-personal-care-hygiene-wfh-return-to-work/
Among those changes was the lesser time spent showering, wearing fresh clothes, and in some cases, even brushing teeth,
I understand what you're saying, and I disagree.
People have always judged each other on their appearance. It's built into humans. It takes conscious effort to overlook someone whose dress or appearance deviates too far from the norm.
Do companies in the west take advantage of that? Yes, of course. They'd be stupid not to. But that doesn't explain why every member of the CCP congress wears an identical suit and has neatly trimmed hair. I'll bet they're even wearing deodorant. The Supreme Soviet of the USSR was a bit more diverse in that they wore blue, brown, or beige suits in addition to the standard black. And I'll eat my hat if Russian girls weren't prettying themselves up to impress the boys and making comment on the girls who didn't measure up, just like they do in every country on Earth.
You're trying to take an article about people not wearing deodorant when they work from home and turn it into some kind of racist western plot. It's a bit of a stretch.
Oh okay. I'm trying to draw a connection between the complaints of the people in power. People not using deodorant is being treated like an issue of immorality or a sign that American work ethic is suffering from work from home.
By making this an issue that is hurting businesses, it's implying wrongdoing by people who have no need or use for deodorant.
By vilifying a working class who doesn't need to spend extra money to work, it reminds me of how poor work ethic or professionalism were used to justify oppression or resist giving worker rights.
Hygiene is a good thing and it prevents a lot of health issues, but when work from home prevents the need for extraneous activities (unpaid work like shaving, doing hair, applying deodorant or dressing properly), it's treated like a sign of societal ill
As I understand it, people in power like landowners or employers can create extra hoops to justify poor working conditions and a population of unemployed people.
It's not directly racist to require deodorant to work, but in light of the productivity staying the same, a news article lamenting the profit losses of deodorant companies sounds disingenuous and indirectly supports an oppressive system that arbitrarily needs workers to pay for extra grooming to function. When wfh proves the opposite.
It's okay if deodorant sales go down when people are able to do their jobs away from other people.
The framing of the article reminds me of the posturing around workers, particularly Black workers, and who gets to decide what is and isn't professional.
Again, grooming and fashion are fine. It's when it's treated as a moral failing and individual worker needs to whine for (through paying for cosmetics and extra items and the time lost in getting ready for work.)
I see this as similar to requiring a person to have a car to work and how the economic system in place makes it particularly hard for poorer people to work. Especially when the wealth is disproportionately smaller in BIPOC communities.
I don't see the implications of immortality or lack of work ethic in the small amount of the article you can see without a Forbes subscription. But regardless, remember Forbes' target readership: business executives, investors, and people in the finance industry. Those people aren't considered bastions of morality by the populace at large anyway.
Also remember that Forbes readers are more likely to work from home than the general public. They aren't going to try to villify their reader base.
Forbes is all about business. Deodorant sales were down during lockdown and are recovering now that people are returning to work. That's noteworthy if you own stock in Proctor & Gamble, for instance, and makes for an interesting bit of information even if you don't. It makes me wonder about other industries affected by the return to work.
But if you really want to read it that way, go ahead. Just don't be surprised if you have to repeatedly explain the extremely tenuous connection between this article and western oppression.
It's Fortune, but I see what you mean. I won't say I'm letting go of the beliefs I have right now about expectations in the workplace, but I'll read more on them. If my points aren't making sense, that's on me and maybe I need to read and better refine my points.
I don't think those magazines are a bastion of morality, but they do get more mainstream attention than day Jacobin or other left-leaning publications.
I don't think it matters that the article itself has an explicit stance. Taking a moral stance in the text isn't where the narrative comes from. It's the fact that this story being published in the first place, and the associations people would make (wfh being unhygienic by a lack of deodorant and other grooming). It doesn't matter if the article says being hygienic is good or bad. Pointing out the lack of deodorant use and connecting it to work from home was a deliberate choice.
Think instead if the article or headline described the phenomenon of wfh as saving money for the average worker because they don't need to buy shaving cream.
At the end of the day, it's a magazine owned by a major corporation using its reputation to talk about events in a certain way.
I don't see the article as being pro worker from what framing I can see. It's not the article itself, but its existence in a space where the media narrative is 'people don't want to work anymore.'
I'm not gonna continue trying to convince you, but I would ask that you consider what a magazine supported by wealthy people would stand to gain from publishing this story instead of say, a story about the health benefits of working from home.
I hope you have a good night and I thank you for giving me a reason to reevaluate how I'm communicating my arguments.