Armpit fetishism

The natural body smell is a powerful force in sexual attraction,[3] and can be focused by the strong pungent odor of the armpit: Alex Comfort considered that for a woman to shave her armpits was “simply ignorant vandalism”, obliterating a powerful sexual tool, and praised the French for greater sexual awareness than American deodorant culture in this regard.[4]

A woman's armpits, armpit hair, and secretions can be seen as essential components of her femininity, whether this is positively[5] or negatively valued.[6] Havelock Ellis found evidence that (in a non-sexual context) smelling one's own armpit could act as a temporary energy boost.[7]

Those who have a mild fetish for armpits often enjoy kissing, tasting, tickling and smelling their partner's armpits during sexual foreplay, perhaps asking partners not to shower or wash their armpits nor wear deodorant for a period of hours.

The symbolic equation of armpit and vagina may underpin the fetish, as also the odor.[8] Sigmund Freud however saw such fetishism as becoming problematic only when such preparatory acts substituted totally for intercourse as a final goal.[9]

• The French novelist Huysmans wrote an essay 'Le Gousset' on the various smells of what he called the "spice-boxes" that were women's armpits.[12]
• Havelock Ellis quotes a Chinese poet writing to his lover of "your odorous armpit...that embalsamed nest".[13]
• The folk-tale motif of vagina in armpit is known from Ohio to the East Indies.[14]
• Song by Vermont jam band Phish, which was first played 11/19/1992 and most recently played 12/31/2019. According to Phish.net, the lyrics tell the story of a battle with a witch; one singular line refers to a particularly stinky axilla that makes the narrator lose his/her appetite.