It’s sweaty season and everyone is suffering, with temperatures expected to climb back up to 35°C in London. But one particular heatwave plight that men simply don’t have to worry about is boob sweat.
Dealing with perspiring breasts during the summer is a burden many women bear. On TikTok, boob sweat is often dubbed as ‘gross’ or classed as something to ‘fix’ or ‘combat’. From a young age, girls learn to stuff tissues under their boobs and choose their outfits strategically.
The double standard of sweat
While nobody wants to be noticeably sweaty in public, there’s often a disparity in how a perspiring woman is viewed versus a man. Products such as ‘Ta-Ta Towels’ and ‘Dress Shields’ are created as a reminder to women that concealing sweat should always be a priority.
During a 2024 red carpet appearance, former Pussycat Doll Ashley Roberts was ‘sweat-shamed’ for rocking visible pit stains. Trolled for this ‘fashion fail’, the singer appeared on Good Morning Britain to encourage others to ‘own it’ and to ‘get your pits out.’
In pop culture, when a woman sweats it’s because she’s flustered – think any scene featuring a ‘hysterical’ Miranda in her eponymous British sitcom. Or, it’s something to be horrified by, like the movie Wild Child coining ‘S.U.L.A’ (Sweaty Upper Lip Alert). Meanwhile, a single shot of Jeremy Allen White sporting a sweaty brow makes the internet go feral, as sweat has long been used to imply a man is strong, powerful and sexy.
Activist Gina Martin on gendered expectations
Activist Gina Martin, who successfully campaigned to make upskirting illegal in England and Wales in 2019, tells Metro that, as women, ‘our physical existence and expression has always been shaped by gendered expectations.’ She explains: ‘As a practitioner and facilitator I’ve run hundreds of gender stereotype workshops in high schools where girls constantly bemoan the ladylike expectations put on them from how they look, speak, act, sit, move and express. They note how the cis het male body can exist more physically freely.’
Gina says examples girls have given her include how boys are comfortable with their bodily functions in public, how men don’t feel the need to lower their voices during phone calls, can manspread, and spit or sneeze without judgement — and, how sweat is often seen as a sign of grit on boys but not them.
She adds: ‘Women’s bathroom cupboards are filled with products that aim to “solve” every conceivable human part of us that doesn’t quite fit those Eurocentric expectations of femininity.’
Pressure to look a certain way
In a 2021 YouGov survey, 71% of Britons agreed that women face more pressure than men to look a certain way, with women in their 20s and 30s feeling most pressurised.
Recently, a culture podcast made the argument that ‘being gross’ was inherently a feminist act. Encouraging other women to ‘stop performing for standards set by men and the male gaze’, the three hosts shared that by prioritising comfort over presentation, it challenges the assumption that women must always curate themselves to be pleasant, palatable, or decorative to others. One of the points made was the importance of trying to ‘normalise body realism’ — including acknowledging sweat without shame.
Gina concludes: ‘I don’t want the freedom to fart on a train — that’s gross. And I don’t need to manspread to be comfortable. But I sure as hell would like to see the double standards shift so that we can exist more freely, whatever that means for each of us.’
