To know body is to know self

One day I grew tired of trying to maintain this body. It is only a vessel after all. It comes and it goes in this quest to grab hold of eternity.
So I chucked the deoderants in the bin and shoved the lotions aside in search of my natural body odour.
I am sure everybody has one. But as we walk down a crowded street or pack ourselves like wholesale into a taxi, all we give off are the pungent smells of Hugo Boss, Clinique Happiness, and that perfume...you know, that one that Britney Spears has claimed as her exclusive scent. Where is the self beneath all this?
In an attempt to defy yet another convention I refused to smell of anything in particular. The rest of the world might think it is normal for one's armpits to smell of babmboo and a tropical rainforest. I do not. I cannot.
For a week I went without applying lotion to my body; willing my skin to give off that natural glow. Until one morning, while walking down the street lodged between Lonwabo and Awonke, Lonwabo turns to me and makes a comment about how ashy my face is. As grey as a cloud, he said. Or something clever like that. Awonke took out her bite sized vaseline container, every girl should have one apparantly, and right there, in the middle of the street, she dabbed it like a doting mother onto my face.
I was cut, and went to buy my own handy vaseline that same afternoon.
Then for three weeks I did not apply any deoderant on. No perfumes or any of those fancies. I had to smell like something.
By the end of the experiment I found myself smelling exactly like what the world calls BODY ODOUR! Who would have guessed?
Yes, that scent that makes everyone's nose cringe and leaves at least two empty seat between you and everyone else on the train.
I am ashamed to say that I found my own smell so revolting that I opted to cover it up with bamboo instead. I do not understand. At what point did my senses get conditioned to this? Would it have been the same if, from birth my mother put nothing on my body, simply let it be. If the world allowed me to perspire in peace. For that is what the body does; sweat.
Daily, as I apply that bamboo stick under my arms and grease up my body, I grieve for that part of this self I will never know.