Mitchum: an “accidentally vegan” antiperspirant-deodorant

by tfowler

Going vegan and not stinking is actually more of a challenge than you might think.  Sure, there are plenty of deodorants out there that are vegan, but virtually all of them are only available in health food stores, many of them are ineffective, and many of them seem reminiscent of what you’d expect from some hippie hoopty-doopty crap: ‘here, rub this orange crystal under your arms, you’ll smell like a delightful fae ring!”  Ugh.  Plus, I use antiperspirant.

Enter Mitchum!  Mitchum, owned by Revlon*, is ‘accidentally’ vegan, in that it does not contain animal ingredients and isn’t tested on animals, but isn’t specifically branded to vegans.  It is, as far as I can tell, the only vegan antiperspirant-deodorant available widely – I can get it in grocery and drug stores.  (I’ve heard that Ban is accidentally vegan as well, but I couldn’t find any Ban for men).

Anyway, I use(d)** the Mitchum unscented gel regularly.  It does, in fact, have no scent at all, which is quite good for those who don’t particularly like scents.  It did a good job keeping me dry and stink free, so it got the job done.  Now, when I got exceptionally anxious or nervous, which doesn’t happen as regularly to me as it does to my cat, Blossom, I found that it didn’t always hold up.  On a few occasions I left a lecture I was giving and saw that I was a little sweaty.  So, it’s not perfect, but it certainly gets the job done.  Mitchum promises to be so strong that it will last 48 hours.  I’ve never tested that, but it does certainly last the 24 hours I would regularly wear it for.

The Gel isn’t perfect, honestly.  It goes on smoothly, but some days it felt like it was a little bit of a film on me, which was unpleasant, but on the overwhelming majority of days it was perfectly fine.  The major problem I had was that I would leave my stick of the stuff in my gym bag, in my trunk, for the whole day. If it was even marginally hot outside, the gel would lose consistency, and the next day be a little goopy, which was rather unpleasant.  Now, if you don’t leave your stick lying around in hot trunks, yeah, you’ll be fine..

Mitchum Power Gel

Mitchum antiperspirant-deoderant, 4/5

tl;dr: long lasting and powerful, gets the job done, but the gel can get a little goopy

Until next time, be kind to animals.

*Alright, lets talk about Revlon for a second, here.  Apparently Revlon used to tell PETA (and whoever asked) that they didn’t test on animals, but it was uncovered that they were selling products in China that were tested on animals.  While Revlon apparently, now, does test on animals, I cannot find anything online that suggests that Mitchum does.  It’s your call – if you don’t want to support Mitchum because money would go to Revlon, that makes total sense to me.

**recently switched to Jack Black – review forthcoming!