Gonna Make You Sweat

Gothamist is shocked that we missed this when it was released last month. Old Spice deodorant has determined that El Paso, Texas is America's sweatiest city. Old Spice has "calculated" that El Paso residents produce enough sweat in a four-hour period to fill an Olympic-sized pool. Thank you, Old Spice, for that visual image! New York edged out Richmond and Roanoke, Virginia for 63rd place on the somewhat non-sensical list where Anchorage is sweatier than Washington, DC! The rankings make the assumption that the sweating person is walking outside for an hour, apparently during the time of greatest temperature. This reminds Gothamist of the Odd Couple episode where Felix tells Oscar "when you assume you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me"".

El Paso, which does get hot in the summer is in the high desert. In other words, it's a dry heat. For example, it is 78 degrees in El Paso this morning with a dew point temperature of only 41 degrees. Any perspiration a person has under those conditions quickly gets evaporated away. Evaporating water away from your skin takes energy out of the atmosphere. That's why you feel cool getting out of a pool even on a hot day and why sweating helps you cool off.

The reward for this great honor? Old Spice is giving the mayor of El Paso a year's supply of Red Zone antiperspirant "the strongest form of wetness protection ever made for guys". Gothamist wishes he could have been part of the ad agency's meeting where it was decided that saying "guys" would sell more antiperspirant than saying "men". We are also left asking the rhetorical question, if sweating is a form of cooling, wouldn't it logically follow that using an antiperspirant cause a person to get warmer?