This piece is part of new series in which Ravishly editor Katie Tandy explores the psychology behind a fetish, and writer Jetta Rae DoubleCakes writes a piece of erotic fiction that reveals how it would manifest in a sexual encounter. Color Me Kinky refers to the "hanky code," a system in which certain colors connote one's sexual interests and proclivities in public spaces. Previously we've written about Foot Fetish (coral) and Mommy Play (mint green). Stay tuned for more science-smut next week, but right now? Revel in armpit worship! (Magenta.)
In the canon of carnal sins among humanoids, being smelly often tops the list.
We spend much of our time on our little blue earth—9 full days every year in fact—trying desperately to "groom," to keep our bodily selves decidedly un-bodily. And there are few parts we like to torture and de-body more than our armpits. From the moisture to the hair and smell, our underarms are positively pariahs; we dread every move they make and beat them every morning into surly submission.
But I digress.
Odor, by definition, is not a negative thing, and neither (unless you're talking to devout Catholics or something) is a body. Body odor is not a mere descriptor of the way a body smells. It is synonymous with stink. With shame. With a problem one needs to address. But somewhere along the line—arguably beginning with straight-up aluminum chloride in 1888—and evolving into a full-blown crusade by the 1950s, body odor became enemy #1.
While there are obvious gradations of this disdain—with crunchy artistic types and the French (I jest) forgoing efforts to combat it for ages—the fact remains that even if you don't harbor hatred or shame for your lowly armpits, you likely don't find them sexy.
Fools! Don't you know those damp crevices are some of the most sensitive spots on your body? Armpit worshippers sure do.
Like most fetishes, the situation with armpit worshipping is one part science and three parts ineffable—i.e. comprised of some largely indefinable and untraceable combination of your upbringing, DNA, socioeconomic background, your body type, brain chemistry, and that "weird porn" you once watched in high school. No one is exactly sure what makes us gravitate towards one kink or another. We all just keep orgasming and move on.
But for the sake of understanding one another's mind stews a bit better, let's explore the science notion for a minute.
What exactly makes us smell? And why does everybody smell a bit different?
First off, our body—especially our skin—is basically a wonderland, a bona fide bacterial biome, hosting millions of interdependent organisms:
"The skin is also an ecosystem, harboring microbial communities that live in a range of physiologically and topographically distinct niches. For example, hairy, moist underarms lie a short distance from smooth dry forearms, but these two niches are likely as ecologically dissimilar as rainforests are to deserts." — Topographical and Temporal Diversity of the Human Skin Microbiome
To make it quick and dirty and rather simple (let's get to the sex stuff, bitch!) body odor occurs when those bacteria kickin' it in your pits break down protein into acids. Weirder still? Sweat's smell is actually undetectable by the human schnoz; what you're huffing and alternatively grimacing over/masturbating to are the bacteria doing their busy work in the sweat.
There are two glands responsible for all this redolent hullabaloo; the eccrine—which exist all over and open directly onto the skin—and apocrine glands, which are concentrated where there are hair follicles. I.e., the armpits and genitals! And amid all this sweating and stinking about there are, of course, raging controversies about whether or not all this pit-liquid possesses pheromones—chemical signals that unconsciously drive our sexual attraction. Psycho-neuroendocrinologists believe that these stink-signals not only let a man-suiter know when a female is ovulating (for example) but also any partner's (male, female, genderqueer) immunocompatibility—meaning we can actually "smell" (through olfactory cues) the health of someone else's genes and their potential ability to compliment ours.
Needless to say, smell and attraction are complicated shit.
To Stink Human, To Worship Divine
Known among the nimble-tongued as maschalagnia, armpit worship manifests it in all kinds of ways; some people find the heady, onion-soup smell arousing—olfactophilia; while others love the hair—hircusophilism. Some gravitate toward the smooth, fleshy crevice as a place to stick tongues, fingers and penises—axillism, or "bagpiping"—with some loving that it's so intimate (who but a lover will lick your armpit?!), while others dig that it's dirty.
"I think the act of licking another person’s armpit or breathing in their odor are a means of striving for intimacy, on a very base level. A person’s musk is very distinctive; very much a product of that individual and how their body processes various consumables. Just as one might consume a dude’s cum in order to feel closer, so might one dive in and lick a man’s arm pits as a means of capturing another individual’s primal essence." — Upton King, WonderlandBurlesque.com"
In his series "Acquired Tastes" King describes three sexual encounters that included some good old fashioned axillary-love. "We loved the smell of each other. Diving into his pit was like laying my tongue on a ripe piece of mango. So earthy and rich, I could get lost in it (and on several occasions, did . . ."
"Sight is our most intellectual sense, and we trust ourselves to it with comparative boldness without any undue dread that its messages will hurt us by their personal intimacy; we even court its experiences, for it is the chief organ of our curiosity, as smell is of a dog's. But smell with us has ceased to be a leading channel of intellectual curiosity. Personal odors do not, as vision does, give us information that is very largely intellectual; they make an appeal that is mainly of an intimate, emotional, imaginative character." — Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4
Ellis also discusses the notion that one man's offensive stink is another man's raging erection; in fact he argues that the same "repulsive" smell wafting from a stranger on the subway could create arousal when sniffed on a beloved lover. In this scenario, context is everything. The psychological intimacy or attraction one has already forged for someone becomes part and parcel with that person's stench.
(On a personal note, I identify as a smelly girl. My brother finds my smell downright dastardly . . . while my current lover will half-moan every time we're wrestling about: "I love the way you smell." This makes sense. My brother and I should not be making babies and in case society hasn't done the trick, his nose is letting him know the danger.)
"Personal odor, in order to make its allurement felt, and not to arouse antipathy, must, in normal persons, have been preceded by conditions which have inhibited the play of the antisexual instinct . . . It is even possible, that the olfactory organ needs to have its sensibility modified in a form receptive to sexual messages, though such an assumption is by no means necessary. It is when such a faint preliminary degree of tumescence [arousal] has been attained, however it may have been attained . . . that a sympathetic personal odor—is enabled to make its appeal. If we analyze the cases in which olfactory perceptions have proved potent in love, we shall nearly always find that they have been experienced under circumstances favorable for the occurrence of tumescence [sex.] When this is not the case we may reasonably suspect the presence of some degree of perversion." — Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4
Which is to say those aroused by smelly strangers on the subway are somewhat perverted. But hey, who isn't. (And let's not let this unforunate and likely misleading moniker interfere with the undie-exploding, carnal joys of armpit fetishists.)
Like so:
From behind, her lover quietly layered pink rope over her wrists. She eyed the floor, emitting whimpers from a throat in perpetual mid-gulp. She had lit candles. She picked out the music. This was all according to plan—her plan.
“You know, sometimes she sneaks into my room while she thinks I’m sleeping and touches herself.” Her lover parted strands of lavender hair that clung to her pursed lips. This was getting real. Asking for what you want and getting it, with care and sincerity—without the expectation of being guilted and coerced into something you don’t want, later—is terrifying. We are not taught that these people and relationships can exist.
In that same constrained vein: before that first excited gasp of desperate release, I never would have known another woman could find romance in my muscles, or gaze into my unshaven, unclean armpit and find bliss within.
“Is that so? Is that what gets dirty little dyke scum like you off? Are you afraid to admit what you are?”
“She’s just being very shy. I’ve been on her computer. I know this is what she wants.”
I lifted her chin up to meet me. She was practically trying to swallow her own lip, eyes locked shut. Like she was trying to wish away her own arousal. This was all according to plan—her plan. Just as my grabbing her by the cheeks and forcing her mouth open. My pretty fetish fish.
“Predictable. You dweebs are all alike. You blog about how those big gross dyke punks and how mean they are, but then you jerk off to us. You’re sick. You need help.”
I cradled her matted her and brought her face beneath my arm. There was a non-trivial amount of sweat. I was nervous, too. I wanted her to have this, and have it done right.
“You need my help. Kiss it.”
Just the tiniest decimal point of a tickle of her lips. But we heard it. We saw the wriggling of her knees, the stamping of her feet.
“Did you like that, precious one?”
“I think she did.”
“Yeah, but I wanna hear it from her. Did you like that? Did you like tasting what a big strong woman tastes like? Do you want more? Does the little, tiny scum dyke want to know what being strong tastes like?”
“. . .”
“I think you might just need some encouragement.”
She heard her lover turn on the vibrator behind her. A light in her eyes eclipsed all doubt.
When she kissed my armpit again I could feel the mechanically influenced quaking of her cunt. Even my teeth rattled a bit—she was staying focused. She let out a gentle lick, parting through my grimy hair with tender shame-faced appreciation.
“I can’t hear you.”
“……ummmmm.”
“Use some of those booksmarts and tell me that you’re a dirty dyke and that you like this.”
“Maybeeeee—“
I took a fistful of that drenched lavender and shoved her whole face into my armpit. The giddy squeal, if it were a bullet, would have just gone clean through me and taken out the window. She began to feed. Like a pig. Swallowing up the skin and sweat before her as if it were her last meal. And maybe, if I played the role well enough, a part of her just may have thought so.
The vibrator went up a speed and that squeal became a scream. It filled my body with the echo of a primal drive. You’d have thought my body hollow, with how far into my fingers and toes I could feel hear her thrashing and crying.
As her hips quivered and collided with me, she let a grateful sob into my arm, smearing the union of my sweat and her own spit over her flushed and panting face.
“This is so beautiful.”
I wonder if I’m still there at all, lingering at the back of her palette when she holds hands and hears stories of roller derby.
