Sweaty Season has returned to the damp seat of government

All human bodies are inherently disgusting, but in temperatures above 90 degrees this fact becomes particularly hard to disguise. The sweat begins to dampen armpits, creeping across the back, leaving dark blotches of moisture like a lumbar Rorschach blot. It trickles down the temples, beads across the upper lip, collects in pools on the elbow crease. It leaves women sticky beneath the bands of their bras, men mopping their bald spots, everyone pulling at their collars and fanning their cheeks. When it’s very, very bad - like it is this week - you might see someone get up from their Metro seat and leave behind a dank, glistening imprint of their thighs.

This is not the impression that people in this city are interested in making.

“I like to be put-together, and I just feel like I can’t be in this weather, honestly,” says Megan Gilkes, a self-proclaimed sweaty girl who works in government relations. Who could feel put-together when it feels “like the inside of a mouth”? On 90 degree days, Gilkes says, “I sweat from my scalp, and then it messes up my hair, and then it drips down and it messes up the makeup, too.”

JB Bridgeman, 35, a program manager for a trade association in D.C., was on his way to a job interview a few summers ago when he got lost and ended up walking in the heat longer than he had intended.

“I show up to the interview already drenched in sweat,” Bridgeman says. “They’re interviewing me, and it’s clear that we are all distracted by how sweaty I am. Needless to say, I did not get that job.”

Sweaty Season is here again. The recurring summer of our discontent. The annual sweeping-back of the ocean, except the ocean is on our foreheads. Lovely irony that Washington - a city full of swaggering mercenaries, political theater kids, walking LinkedIn profiles - becomes, for three months out of the year, an open-air sauna that is liable to transform them, under a full sun, into a pack of sweat werewolves. The Brooks Brothers suits and Tuckernuck dresses of D.C.’s business-formal set are steaming them like a filet of fish en papillote. No wool will ever be lightweight enough. Linen - the preferred breezy fabric of summer suiting - mops up sweat like a sponge. The men of McPherson Square are … moist. Women can go sleeveless, but that only means there are fewer fabrics to absorb their sweat, not necessarily that they’re making less of it.

Never let them see you sweat? Good luck with that.

As CNN’s chief congressional correspondent, it’s Manu Raju’s job to get lawmakers to answer his questions. That can mean standing on the steps of the Capitol, in the direct sunlight, for hours, in a suit, to catch those lawmakers as they depart after votes. If he were to stand in the shade, he would not be able to see which members are walking to their cars and get in position with his crew with enough time to interview them.

Which means he has “to deal with just being a complete sweaty mess” as he approaches officials to interview them - on camera. “You can take a towel and wipe yourself off, but two seconds later you’re going to be sweating again,” Raju says. “So you just kinda gotta own it.”

CNN’s Alayna Treene reports from the line of outdoor broadcaster tents on the White House lawn known as “Pebble Beach” - a nickname that, inappropriately, evokes the mild California seaside. When she’s not there, she’s often reporting from the Florida humidity at Mar-a-Lago. Sweat can “make you look very shiny, which is a no-no on TV,” Treene says, so she’s constantly spackling her face with powder. Besides, she has “naturally curly, frizzy hair” that both puffs up and goes damp as humidity and sweat combine, so she often has to pull it back in a ponytail.

Okay, at least CNN reporters get some occasional relief. Not so for the many Washingtonians whose jobs exist almost entirely outdoors.

“I’ve had days where we had sweat running down our faces into our eyes,” says Rachelle Yeung, 37, a bartender at Aslin, a beer garden on 14th Street NW with a small indoor bar that she says is insufficiently air-conditioned. Management has given them portable fans, but it’s not enough, Yeung says, adding that the bartenders’ union is fighting for more relief from heat. “Further evaluations and upgrades are underway” for the HVAC, says Aslin co-owner Andrew Kelley, and “temporary measures like fans and cooling towels to help staff stay safe and comfortable” are an interim solution.

Natty McAlpine works as the lead trail ranger for the Washington Area Bicyclist Association - a job that includes going out on D.C.’s bike trails to clear obstacles and help other cyclists. On weeks as steamy as this one, she goes through multiple shirts each day, as she sweats through them.

It’s not as bad as it seems, McAlpine says, sounding very much like someone whose last name reads like a blast of mountain air. “When you’re biking, you build up a little breeze, so you’re not as hot as everyone else.”

But her first sweaty summer in D.C. still shocked her - especially because she is from Jamaica: “I’m like, how are we closer to the equator [in Jamaica], and it’s hotter here?”

Come to think of it, maybe we had better check on the Scandinavians?

“The first time I experienced the moist, wet heat, that was overbearing. Daunting,” says Helena Lewin, spouse to a Swedish diplomat posted in Washington. “You can shower just so many times per day, right? It doesn’t really matter because you take one or two steps, and you get sweaty.”

Kelly Deschaine, 24, is a Maryland controls engineer whose work recently brought her to a large laboratory that featured a room - intended for testing different construction materials in extreme conditions - that had a climate of 100 percent humidity. It wasn’t necessary for her project, but when offered the chance to go inside, she wanted to see what that felt like. In the room, she began to sweat instantly. “My hair puffed up,” she says. Her face grew moist. When she took a deep breath, there was so much moisture in the air that she felt like she had to cough. “It’s how it feels going outside” in D.C. lately, she says. (At least there was no sunshine.)

We may be fighting a losing battle against our sweat stains, but we’ll go down swinging. A number of euphemized products exist to soothe our sweaty discomfort in the most sensitive regions: undershorts for women that alleviate “chub rub” and lotions for men with names such as “Happy Nuts.” Moisture-wicking fabrics and clinical-strength antiperspirant can go only so far.

For those with true hyperhidrosis - the clinical name for excessive sweating - there is another solution: Botox. The same injection that smooths foreheads can also “temporarily block the secretion of the chemical that is responsible for ‘turning on’ the body’s sweat glands,” writes the International Hyperhidrosis Society. (Their motto, which is absolutely perfect: “Know Sweat.”)

Terrence Kearney, a dermatologist with SkinDC in Arlington, performs the procedure often in the late spring, before the temperatures swell. Some women, he says, get “blowtox” - Botox to prevent scalp sweat, to make their blowouts last longer. Procedures cost between $900 and $1,200, and last between four and six months, though insurance will cover it for non-cosmetic cases of hyperhidrosis. (And, no, paralyzing your armpit sweat glands doesn’t just make you sweat more profusely from all of your other parts, Kearney says: “You still have so much body surface area. So it has no impact on temperature regulation.”)

Another option, if you dare: Embrace the sweat. Sit with the moisture. Accept the dampness.

When Lara Atella teaches at Hot Yoga Capitol Hill, her studio reaches 105 degrees Fahrenheit. But even when the combined temperature and humidity outside of the studio produce a heat index that is exactly the same, as they did Monday afternoon, she still feels a little bit cooler in the D.C. heat than in the studio. “After you’ve taken a hot yoga class, you are sweating a lot,” she says. But “the sweat is evaporating, so you’re cooling yourself off.”

Because her job is in such a sweaty environment, “I would say that I’m probably a little bit more comfortable with just being with my sweat,” Atella says. Her air conditioning broke a couple of weeks ago, she said Friday, but “I have no rush to fix it because I can tolerate the heat.”

There’s heat, and then there’s what’s happening this week. On Tuesday afternoon, as the thermometer neared 101 (“with heat index values up to 111,” the National Weather Service advised), we checked back in with Atella - curious and a bit concerned. How was she faring in this citywide hot-yoga studio?

“Just installed a window unit in my bedroom,” she texted.