Do your worst. We will make you not smell.
I have been wanting to alter my rather closed-minded opinion that Japanese culture is really weird, but I guess I’m going to have to say sayonara to that idea, at least for today — because a Japanese textile company has invented underwear that promises to absorb unwanted body odors. And although the goal here is to make air quality all over the globe more pleasant, well, I just can’t help being more grossed out than I have ever been in my whole life. Is that wrong?
The fabric used to make these fart-hungry undies has odor-absorbing particles in its fibers. It took the company several years to come up with something that worked that was also comfortable to wear. (We can imagine!)
The inspiration behind odor-absorbing underwear was people with irritable bowel syndrome who fart a lot and kind of wanted to keep this between them and God. Understandable. But now, of course, people with no issues at all want to get their hands on these things, so they can just fart with impunity. I’d like to say this is gross, but then, how will I ever know that such deceit is even happening? With my luck I’d be married to some guy for three years and open his underwear drawer one day and be like, you? You’re the one who buys these things? But I thought you were perfect!
The company is not letting itself stop with farts and fart smells. It is developing clothing that will sop more foulness, like socks that prevent feet from smelling and T-shirts that mask plain old B.O., just in case people have never managed, unlike me, to find the perfect brand of deodorant. So, pretty soon we won’t even have to bathe anymore. We’ll just walk around in our odor-absorbing clothes, giggling to ourselves that no one knows how disgusting we are. Wait. That kind of sounds like fun. Hey. This technology rules. Japan rules.
