I'm standing on a yacht, surrounded by glamorous women nearly half my age. I'm at a black-and-white themed birthday bash for my real-housewife-in-training coworker, Allie. I'm the oldest person by at least a decade -- and my skin is completely naked. My grease-soaked hair is pulled back into a slick ponytail. To me, the whole look reads austere (Think Holly Hunter in "The Piano"). I've been dreading this night all week. Like most fretting, it turns out to be wasted energy. Allie and her guests tell me my hair looks great, and that I look frustratingly good without makeup. You would never know I haven't showered in six days.

While my confidence is soaring, Jessica's is at an all-time low. The combination of daily workouts and not bathing has given her a major case of cystic acne, which she attempts to resolve by strapping an ice pack to her face. Tonight, she also has a swanky party to attend. Like me, she's overly anxious, thinking about meeting strangers without a lick of cover-up or deodorant. Her discovery that night: "The more you drink, the more you don't care about the fact that you look like a troll. In fact, you become more confident."

During a recent get-together, I tell my friends what I'm up to. "Committing to a month without showering also means committing to a month without sex," says my girlfriend. In unison, the men in the room reply, "Why?"

So I really shouldn't have been surprised when, two days later, as I walk into the house covered in dirt from doing yard work all day, my husband tries to get frisky with me. And it should come as no surprise to the women reading this that I decline.

For the first time in a week, I wear my hair down. It's clumpy with grease and smells like a moth-addled basement. On the way to work, I stop at the supermarket. It feels wrong to be handling fresh produce. I fully expect someone to mistake me for homeless and ask me to leave. I am befuddled when no one so much as gives me a second glance.

"Uh, that's because your hair looks wet," says my coworker, when I later explain what happened.

Jessica and I have serious dandruff, and our scalps itch like crazy. Flakes of dead skin dot our hairlines. No matter how many times we run a brush through our hair, we can't get it to budge -- the grease holds onto it like glue. When Jessica scratches her head, her nails are filled with soft, damp scalp.

Our managing editor feels her gag reflex kick in and has to leave the room.

Today, I'm wearing a billowy dress that lets me catch a whiff of myself whenever I move. It smells exactly like a sweaty, unshowered groin. I honestly can't tell if the smell is coming from my armpits or my lady parts, because at this moment, there is no perceptible difference.

Less than two weeks in, everyone is growing tired of our experiment -- and Jessica and I feel ostracized. The Total Beauty team has nicknamed me Pits and told Jessica she smells like "yesterday's food."

For the third day in a row, I ask my husband to smell my armpit and rate it 1 to 10, with 10 being putrefied corpse. "I don't want to play this game anymore," he says. "I want my wife back." Then, he rates me a 9.

During a run on the beach, I pass a homeless man sleeping in the sand. I wonder what his skin's microbes are like, and whether he smells. After all, he sleeps in dirt (where the good bacteria live), probably has no beauty products nor much opportunity to shower. After some intense Googling, I learn that, when it comes to B.O., wearing dirty clothes is way worse than not showering. So if you have the choice between bathing or doing laundry, take the latter.

When I get home, I spray myself liberally with the Mother Dirt mist (the microbes feast on sweat and work better when it's present, says Aganovic), then set about prepping food for a dinner party. It's liberating -- and a total time saver -- to not have to worry about getting myself ready. At the last minute, I change into a clean, long-sleeved shirt and hug our guests hello. "You must be doing so much laundry right now," says my friend. My cheek sticks to her face as we pull apart. "You don't smell, but your skin feels really tacky," she says.