Another overly long fb post carried to here.

Oops, I have been referring to SDCC being on cnn.com when it was actually DragonCon. SDCC being talked about on cnn.com isn’t that strange since it has been drawing more of the mainstream population especially for the movies. DragonCon is a little farther into geek.

There is a comment about “Thousands of excited sci-fi and fantasy fans,… makes everything a little more odoriferous,” I have heard and partaken in discussion on this idea of smelly fans for most of my con life but, honestly, I don’t run into it. There are a few smelly fans but I run into smelly people outside of fandom as well pretty much the same percentage. I can imagine that in the dark ages of fandom when fans were only those that lived in basements and/or most were socially ignorant, that this was a prevalent problem. By the time I discovered cons and groups of fen in the 80s it had spread much larger than that group. Hours in heavy costumes or sitting for days gaming can lead to odoriferous fans but I haven’t run into this any worse than hanging around people that work out. They smell for awhile and then get cleaned up by the next time I see them.

If it is a problem and I can’t tell because I am in the middle of it and have adjusted, then it is fine for it to show up in articles like this. But if it isn’t the kind of problem that doesn’t show up with other groups then I am sick and tired of people making this assumption and passing it along. I am good with a lot of the stereotype of a fan and glad when someone that has looked down on us gets a clue (like Shatner) but we keep this up ourselves we need to stop. Pretty much everyone I have heard that upholds the 6-2-1 rule (at least 6 hrs sleep, 2 meals, and 1 shower a day) sound like they have experience of people who need showers missing them. But because my overly sensitive and often offended sense of smell hasn’t found it to be a problem I wonder if we haven’t been buying into the stereotype too much ourselves and not noticed that particular emperor has no clothes.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/30/living/dragon-con-2013/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter