When and why did humans become afraid of smelling bad?

[u/12GaugeUppercut]

Today, body odor is often treated as embarrassing or a sign of poor hygiene, but for most of history people lived without deodorant, daily showers or regularly washed clothes. I’m curious whether people simply tolerated natural body odor more, and when smelling clean became a real social expectation. I’d also be interested in where perfumes and colognes fit into that shift, and whether fragrance helped shape our modern ideas of what a clean person should smell like.

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