A few months ago I was prowling the aisles of CVS when I spotted a shelf full of roll-on Lady Mitchum deodorants marked with special clearance price tags. Lady Mitchum happens to be my one and only brand for underarm odor and wetness protection. I am totally devout Lady Mitchum. So I grabbed one roll-on dispenser of Lady Mitchum. Only one? These are hard times, and if a body can save a few bucks by buying in bulk, why not two, three, or even four?
Well, the roll-on dispenser gave me pause. I prefer compressed powder, although clear gels are also acceptable. I haven’t used a roll-on in over a decade, and frankly, I was disturbed by what I perceived to be environmentally-unfriendly product design. Yes, I know that commercial deodorant as a concept is not exactly Green, but there is something especially evil about choosing a deodorant dispenser featuring a plastic ball whose sole purpose is to evenly distribute the creamy product throughout the armpit area. It seemed egregiously 1980s in its wastefulness. So my inner miser had to content itself with merely one roll-on Lady Mitchum deodorant on sale.
After weeks of use, I have discovered several fatal design flaws in the roll-on deodorant concept.
For instance, how can the user comfortably tip the bottle so that the roll-on ball is adequately infused with deodorizing cream? I understand that roll-on deodorants function much like ballpoint pens, which must be held upright. Easy to do when writing with a pen, but how so when applying deodorant?
How can the user tell how much liquid deodorant is left in the bottle? More vexing, how can the user tell when there’s no more deodorant left? Yesterday I was getting ready for bed when I caught a whiff of my underarm. Woo-ee, my deodorant failed. This morning, I discovered that it failed because there was no more left. I had been rubbing a dry roll-on ball under my arms, possibly for days or even weeks. Who knows how long, because as Sarah Silverman points out, you can’t smell yourself.
