Right now, in the UK, there is a serious problem with women’s anti-perspirant deodorants. There has been what I can only describe as a backlash against using alcohol, with all brands now proudly emblazoned with ‘0% alcohol’ stickers, like it’s the greatest thing in the world.
I had been using Sure deodorants (the ones with alcohol in them) for years, since I was 12 and first started to wear deodorant. No deodorant ever came close to the performance level of Sure, and I was blissfully plodding through life with sweet-smelling underarms and no sweat patches. A couple of years ago, I was in Boots, and -Hello, what’s this?- next to the traditional Sure deodorants stood some weird milky looking ones with the ‘O% alcohol’ label. Gradually, the deodorants with alcohol were phased out until they were no longer available. I tried the no-alcohol ones, and here are the results of my comparison test:
Sure with alcohol ::::::::::::::::::::: Sure sans alcohol
Dries quickly Feels like you’ve put yoghurt in your armpits and won’t dry
Prevents sweating Puts up a feeble fight against the enemy that is sweat
Keeps you dry Feels unnervingly moist in the pit area all day
No smell after 12 hours Smells as if you’d gone au natural, i.e. unpleasant
Do they not perform tests on these products? With the new deodorants, I can barely do anything, let alone cycle or do any exercise. They don’t dry, get all over your clothes, and do pretty much nothing to stop you from sweating. If you go to their website, all they go on about is ‘your delicate underarms’, which seems damn presumptuous to me. How do you know that all women have delicate underarms? Mine are perfectly fine thank you! Years of shaving and alcohol deodorants have built up quite a tolerance! What about women that don’t simply flit about all day being delicate, what about normal women, who have to get on boiling hot buses, who have to exercise, who have to cope with the tendencies of certain fabrics to absorb sweat like a bloody Weetabix absorbs milk??
I’ve tried other deodorants, and while better than the milky sweat-fest that is the new Sure, they are still 0% alcohol and are still not up to scratch. I’m not freakishly sweaty, but it gets damn humid in England sometimes, and I’d like to be able to cycle and occasionally get flustered without having to constantly check for sweat patches. Women wear tighter clothes than men, yet men still get alcohol in their deodorants. Where’s the justice in that?
Thankfully I just found some old Sures on ebay, so I bought 5 of them. But then what? How much more money can I spend trying out crap deodorants?
The Old Sure: I miss you, friend
The New Sure: my mortal enemy
Wow – I’m so glad that someone else feels the same way!!! I’ve been living in Australia for the past few years, and have found that the deodorants over here are so shocking, I get my mum to send over Sure deodorants (along with Marmite
) ). I’ve finally run out of my supply, and my mum has just informed me that she can’t get any Sure deodorants with alcohol in the UK anymore…….nooooooooo!
Can’t something be done? Is this some new worldwide legislation that bans alcohol in deodorants? I feel *disgusting* most of the time thanks to these crappy alcohol-free deodorants.
It’s a bit of a problem isn’t it! I think that yes, there are some people with sensitive skin, so there should be a *choice* between alcohol and non-alcohol….but why remove alcohol deodorants completely? Not fair!
I really don’t know what I’m going to do- it’s amazing how such a little thing you take for granted can bother you so much!
Hi Hazel
I was looking for alcohol-PACKED deodorants online but to my frustration cannot find any. I’ve been using the alcohol-FREE deodorants for almost 3 years now since I stopped finding the ones containing alcohol on the shelves. Was just wondering if in the meantime, by some small miracle, you’ve perhaps found any deo’s containing alcohol. It’s riduculous that they no longer produce deo’s with alcohol. I’d rather go around with dry, odour and bacteria free armpits than wet, nautral smelling ones. Can’t believe that they’ve removed a tried and tested ingredient. After all, surely it’s not the alcohol that’s harmful to our armpits. Strange how they haven’t removed alcoholic drinks from the shelves as these have been statistically proven to be kill!!! Maybe all us deodorant alcoholics should get together and manufacture our own..
Haha, you mean get a bottle of deodorant and a bottle of vodka and see what we can do?
The search is still on….if i find anything i’ll update this post!
I emailed Unilever about it after my rant (above) – here’s what they said:
“I’m sorry to tell you that we have stopped making Sure Women’s Anti-Perspirant Roll On containing alcohol due to low
demand….”
Bummer.
I’ve since found a men’s roll-on over here in Aus which is still not as good as the old Sure, but better than the crappy new alcohol-free ones. Looks like I’ll just have to smell like men’s deodorant from now on then….better than BO, at least.
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I loved the comment about yoghurt under your armpits, that’s exactly how I feel about these awful non-alcohol deodorants. They take hours to dry and who has that time to spare every morning? I have tracked down Boots 24 hours roll on deodorant which contains alcohol, it’s not quite as good as the Old sure but it’s a huge improvement on the new Sure. Hope that helps you.