So I have balls and yeah they’re the first thing on my body to start to smell. I can skip a shower if I’m in a hurry and I don’t smell much. That’s with working a job that’s usually physical. I was a punk kid fucking punk girls when I was younger and we didn’t bathe every day. I didn’t notice much smell then.
Now I see these ads regularly that are like hey women you stink after 12 hrs 5/10. What’s up?
Generally, “gym funk” is a matter of the normative bacteria going nuts (pun intended) from the added heat and moisture. The best way to handle that is upping the exfoliation with a longer scrub, and paying extra attention to the taint/perineum and be extra thorough drying. A lot of the time, after a shower, the heat has caused the scrotum to loosen up, or labia to swell a bit. This means it can be difficult to really get everything fully exfoliated and dry.
The way I’ve described it before is that the taint is like a watershed. It’s dammed up by fabric, so it catches a lot of the detritus after the rain of a good workout. It’s a bit more difficult for guys because of the way the scrotum can hold onto things, and get in the way, but women can also run into issues with things sticking to the region if they/their caregiver doesn’t pay extra attention.
Someone else mentioned blow drying the area, and that really can work well. Towels can only pull off so much water, and the groin is usually towards the end of the drying process, so they’re damp. You sometimes see older gym rats doing it in the locker room because we’ve run into jock itch from not drying all the way, and that’s no fun at all, but you can wait until you’re home. Works just well for women, but you’d need to at least partly cover the labia, even if the labia minora are hidden by the majora.