Move over skin cycling, there’s a new pedal pusher in town: deo cycling.
It’s a term Into The Gloss landed on after a few weeks of polling around town, where we discovered that quite a few of us were kinda, sorta, absolutely cheating on our aluminum-free deodorant with antiperspirant. At the gym, pits are covered in one thing, and sitting at the desk, another. But like skin cycling, a strategic change-up is the goal here, for a couple of reasons. For starters, there’s absolutely no way that your best smelling deodorant is also your best antiperspirant, or even an anti-perspirant at all. And so, on the days you’re more worried about sweat, you don’t necessarily smell bad with an anti-perspirant, but you don’t smell as glorious as a fragrance-forward aluminum-free deo either.
Anti-perspirants, while top-of-the-line in swatting away sweat and putting the kibosh on b.o., also tend to be less texturally satisfying and cosmetically elegant. They pill and streak and, not to mention, have a lot less curb appeal on your Top Shelf. But then again, who cares?! They work! And a lot of them last for 48 hours (no really, read the label!) So you use them when you have to. And…the rest of the days you use the next best thing, because you care more about fragrance, or packaging, or… Is that a pit stain on your Frankie Shop shirt? Aluminium strikes again.
So yes… deo cycling. We’ll give you some examples! Let’s go through what might be on your docket this week, and which stick you ought to reach for:
Work
Sitting at your workstation: deo
Presenting to your manager: deo
Presenting to your CEO: anti-perspirant
Social
Grabbing drinks with friends: deo
Dancing with friends: anti-perspirant or deo
Walking to work in January: deo
Walking to work in July: anti-perspirant
First date: anti-perspirant
Third date: deo
Life
Grabbing coffee: deo
Any form of exercise: anti-perspirant
Moving apartments: anti-perspirant
Emily in Paris binge-watch: deo
As for our favorites, we’ll let you in on that too. As far as antiperspirants go, few are as user-friendly and powerful as Dove’s Clinical Protection. It’s packed with a mighty 20% aluminum (in the form of aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrex gly), and sinks into skin like a lotion. Honorable mention goes to Old Spice, which is not as powerful, but feels incrementally cooler (both physically and emotionally).
When it comes to aluminum free deos, we have to toot our own horn. Glossier’s Deodorant took years to make because it’s an aluminum free deo that smells good while also limiting wetness and b.o. (thanks to coconut oil and absorbent potato starch to soak up odor-brewing perspiration on the skin’s surface). It smells as good as an eau de parfum (unless you opt for unscented), and the packaging looks just as good next to one, too. We’re betting you’ll be cycling that in most often.
Photo via Glossier
