@ Pinot-
I haven't used deodorant since I left the corporate world in 2010, except sometimes when I'm going to martial arts class (especially if it's hot). In the winter I often forget, and sometimes have a bit of musk coming out, but sometimes you can't tell.
I haven't used soap while showering in a year plus. Actually, it was Franco originally who suggested not using it on your face - he and I were chatting and for whatever reason the topic of pimples on your nose came up, and I mentioned how I'd run out of the facial cleaner I usually used and since I have really oily skin I've been trying to keep my nose clean with some harsh soap and a hard scrubbing, and it actually seems like I get MORE pimples, not less. Franco commented that soap serves as a skin irritant and that you're better off just washing your face with water alone, so I, skeptical at the time, tried it, and stopped getting pimples on my nose almost completely. Makes sense when you think about it; you didn't evolve an oily nose to get a lot of pimples. But we're so used to (at least in America) scrubbing our bodies with soap that we think the oil coming from those bodies is what's making us dirty. Which is... yeah, really stupid when you think about it.
Anyway, after I was no longer using soap on my face, I researched people who don't use soap at all, and decided to try nuking it. Not only did it make showering go a lot faster for me, but I was just as clean... CLEANER, because my skin wasn't dried out from soap or with soap residue hanging around in my pores causing pimples and that nasty soap-musk mix scent you get about 12 hours after a shower once your scent starts pouring out of your scent glands, mixed with a soapy smell. My skin looks healthier and I quit getting the dried out cheeks or hands in the winter last year that I usually get that time of year.
I still use soap to wash my hands with (don't want to get sick, and your hands touch all kinds of things), and will use it to scrub my arms as well as my hands after martial arts class since you've got a bunch of people grabbing your arms during that. That's the only thing I use soap for.
Though, caveat, I've never had an especially strong smell. I definitely have A smell, but it's not going to fill a room or anything unless I've been working out hard, and maybe not even then.
If you're still going to use soap, I'd skip using it before a date. One of the easiest times you'll have picking up and bedding women is right after you work out. Your muscles naturally swell, your scent is pumping out full force, you look dirty and grimy, your hair is messed up, you're covered in sweat, and you just look primal and raw. A lot of guys think about this and think, "Ew, a dirty gym guy... I wouldn't want him around me, so a girl CERTAINLY wouldn't want him around HER!"
But they're thinking about it wrong.
Imagine a GIRL who's just stepped out of the gym: her hair is hanging down in strands and slightly messy. She glistens with sweat, and sweat stains drip down the neckline of her front and the center of her back. Her eyes droop down, looking a little tired, yet she beams a confident smile after such a hard workout. She has a bit of a female musk about her, and her gym clothes tightly hug her moist body the way clothes hug wet torsos and limbs. When she talks to you, it's blunt, short, and a little breathless.
Any interest in this girl? Probably, right?
You probably want to take her out back and shag her senseless, yeah?
Same deal with girls and dirty, sweaty, just-worked-out men.
Even back when I used to use soap, I quit showering the day of a planned night out, because I noticed I tended to perform better on nights when I was dirtier and smellier. It wasn't until I really leveled up a lot that I broke my "cleanliness curse" and was able to shower and shave and go out and pick up even on nights when I was clean. I could never figure out if it was because the lack of a manly scent or being
too clean was the reason, or if maybe I was just psyching myself up too much with the whole shower-and-shave thing and too much excitement is never good for a night out (turns you into a jittery entertainer), and maybe I was just more casual about things the nights I didn't put a big presentation together about myself. But whatever the reason, at least for me, the less "cleanliness prep" I did the day of anything significant - date or picking up - aside from throwing on some nice clean clothes, the better.
@ Troy-
I've used both bar soap and body wash. Usually bar soap. Had all kinds, from super harsh "manly" soap on a ropes to women's bar soap to Cetaphil bar soap designed for people with oily skin and pimples.
I wouldn't worry about what a girl would think about you not using soap to bathe with because she isn't going to know that until she's been seeing you for a while and is fully converted as a lover. At that point, you might get some, "You don't use soap? ... Nasty," + disgusted look, and then you'll just shag her silly as the dirty man and tell her you're too manly for soap, that stuff is for prissy pansies, and if you're rocking her world in the sack she'll start to view not using soap as the manly thing to do and all the other guys around her who are so particular about their hygiene as giant weakling germophobes.
And I wouldn't worry about what your mother thinks about it... sons do all kinds of things that make their mothers put their heads in their hands, and chucking out the soap bar is the least of these
Chase
