By
Tembe Denton-Hurst,
a writer at the Strategist covering beauty and books.
She joined the site in 2020. Previously, she wrote about beauty and culture for Nylon and Elle.
As a Caribbean woman, I am loathe to use me and smelly in the same sentence, but I have to admit my workout clothes smell rank. After a sweaty session, I often peel them off and toss them in the laundry, allowing the bacteria to settle into the fibers and multiply. It shouldn’t have shocked me that my clothes didn’t smell the freshest even after washing, but as someone who views a washing machine as a magic apparatus (I spent much of my childhood in Flatbush laundromats mesmerized by the spin cycle), I was shocked to find that tossing my sweatiest stuff into the laundry with no pre-treatment didn’t result in totally transformed clothes. I do want to note that this isn’t an issue with all my workout clothes. Leggings and sports bras come out smelling fine, but my workout jackets, which sit right in the armpit, often come back smelling vaguely funky. This was only amplified when I worked out again. I’d do a chest press and get a whiff of my previous gym sessions, which was mortifying to me.
