In pictures, festival attendees look beautiful, from the bright colors they are wearing, to the floral festive crowns firmly placed on their heads. But, anyone who’s spent a weekend at one of these magical music marathons knows the not-so-fresh feeling that affects the best of us. Attending any EDM festival will usually have you jumping, dancing, and walking around a lot! And festival season happens when it’s warm, so you should definitely be expecting a lot of sweating from yourself and others. Sometimes, being in the middle of a packed crowd at a festival with a lot of people sweating for long hours can cause several setbacks. On another hand, Campers also face a whole other set of issues, not the least of which is a hygienic dependence on what amounts to a fancy potty.
Sweating might not be a serious problem to you, but some people inevitably sweat A LOT! Even if they are drinking a lot of water and staying hydrated to compensate the loss of liquids their bodies are facing. These people usually are quite self-conscious about themselves and feel bad for the people around them and their accompanying group of friends.
Well, here’s the bottom line: Everyone’s sweating. And if you’re not then you’re most probably missing the point of the festival in the first place which is to have as much fun as you possibly can! To put it simply, nobody really cares but if you’re self conscious about the sweating, then you have several products and options to bring with you to keep things under control. A headband is a crucial items to have with you during your EDM festival experience and don’t care about judgment at these events. The whole point is to have fun. Every year, the music festival business is growing. More and more people flock to their favorite EDM festivals to enjoy a long weekend of fun, dance and music.
Why are music festivals booming?
One way to think about the booming festival business is the music streaming situation. How we consume music changed A LOT in the past few years, and streaming became an easy way to consume it. Music festivals are the counter-trend to the cold streaming of music which is accessible everywhere. You see, we all crave an individualized, authentic experience with our music. Deep down, on a very basic psychological level, we’re all exclusivity snobs and with it’s accessibility to everyone, music lost the experience factor. Users, on digital streaming platforms, simply select a playlist, a track, or an album directly without the “discovery” experience of buying a new CD and getting excited to play it back home for example.
So for the special experience, users are turning elsewhere. An interesting thing to discuss here is what entrepreneur and marketer Seth Godin suggests: there exists a pyramid for every form of media where at the wide bottom is whatever is being offered on a mass scale, and the higher you go, the more exclusive the offering. The “select” or “limited” section discussed by Godin can be an exclusive seat at a theater in Broadway, or attending a certain seminar. This is what consumers crave and they satisfy their fix of whatever is free or mass-produced.
Coming back to the music scene, right now the highest level or section are live events, both the single-artists concert and the Ultra Music and Tomorrowland style festivals. The more unique, the more interesting the EDM festival, then the closer it gets to the “select” group on Seth Godin’s Pyramid. And the higher it gets on that pyramid, the more fans go crazy for it. This is also why music festivals, which take place only once a year in specific locations and only in the weather-convenient summertime, are seeing so much traffic.
Live shows and EDM festivals are the closest fans get to have a unique “intimate” experience with their beloved artists, since paying to spend a one-on-one day with your favorite DJ isn’t something most people can afford.
With everyone wanting to have this experience at least once in their lives, EDM festivals accommodate crowds in the thousands, pictures of packed crowds can be found everywhere on the internet, as we have mentioned earlier in this article, the majority of the attendees will not care for your personal sweating issues, but there are several tips and tricks to keep in mind to avoid any unwanted disappointments that might taint your experience.
Sweat-proof tips & tricks
ANTIPERSPIRANTS VS DEODORANTS
There’s a difference between both. Using antiperspirants helps reduce how much you sweat, while deodorants only mask the smell but nothing else. It is recommended that you check the product you’re using and make sure it’s an antiperspirant.
CHANGE FREQUENTLY
An easy way to “restart” that dry and fresh feeling is to change your shirt frequently. We recommend bringing several additional shirts with you from the start and change them when needed. This will help you keep the soaked, smelly shirts away and your general smell under control.
MEDICAL ANTIPERSPIRANTS
There are several widely used products on the market to control excessive sweating. Those contain Aluminium Chloride Hexahydrate at variable strengths. You can find them at your common drugstore and they will literally stop you from sweating wherever you apply them.
PRACTICE STAMINA
If you’re the kind of person who will start sweating straight after you start dancing, then maybe your body can benefit from some stamina practice. This way, your body can get used to long hours of dancing and the strain it will be put under.
WEARING THE RIGHT CLOTHES
We have advized in a previous article against buying new and expensive clothes, and finding the right type of accessories for the event. In addition to that, we recommend wearing clothes that are help your skin to breath out all the sweat and helps it dry out as well. Invest in a headband or a bandana. This will save you from wiping the sweat off you every other minute during a really good set. This way you can focus more on the dancing and on having fun.
Keep a body powder or spray with you just in case. And keep in mind that sweating is good…it keeps your body temperature in check.
Everyone else is experiencing the same thing
You’re attending this massive event with several hundreds of your peers. You simply have to focus on what matters to you most! Remember you’re all there for the music, the dancing and the good times and you are all sweating together. Yes, the concept of sweating can be off-putting but it should never be the focal point in your weekend festival experience. Remember, the types of people who are attending with you are the same people who follow the positive culture of PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect).
But sometimes, the problem isn’t with you, it’s someone else around you.
Others Sweating? Here’s The Fix
If we’re going to have a great festival experience, we will have to stay away from trouble and any conflict with others. So what if someone dancing right next to you has the unbearable smell of sweat or an extremely bad body odor?
Some people will find a polite way to communicate indirectly their discontent or make the issue known to the relevant people. But for others, and in such a setting, things can be a bit more challenging.
A recommended fix for this will be to simply step away from that person or that group of people. Find another spot nearby that is away from the smell and would feel good for you.
If the smell comes from a person in your group, then that’s an easy thing to solve, you can simply let them know politely and in a way that you guys are accustomed to. Some friends would joke about it bluntly in order to send the message to the concerned individual, others will simply whisper the problem and propose a solution discretely to the smelly individual.
The purpose is to connect
In an EDM festival, it all comes down to connecting with other people, with the music, with your friends and uniting under the shared love for arts and dance. It’s all the PLUR culture in action in order to escape your reality and have the best time you can have and share it with others. Nothing else matters, and nobody really cares, which is in part, the beauty of it.
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