Butt Rashes: 9 Common Causes and How to Treat Them

It’s itchy, it’s red, it’s ruining your day—and worst of all, it’s on your butt.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve fallen victim to a butt rash. The good news is that butt rashes are a relatively common skin condition that responds well to home remedies. The bad news is they’re embarrassing and a literal pain in the ass to deal with.

There are countless potential culprits for your booty breakout, including poor hygiene, allergies, skin infections, and autoimmune disease. Accordingly, the most annoying part of a butt rash is trying to figure out the root cause.

In this article, we’ll break down 9 types of butt rashes, common symptoms, and treatment tips so you can get back on your game.

What Causes a Rash On Your Butt?

We dug through the annals of butt health literature to identify 9 common causes of butt rashes, what they look/feel like, and recommended rash treatment options. There’s a good chance your rash meets one of these descriptions.

Allergic Contact Dermatitis

Symptoms: Red, dry, scaly, crusty, oozy, possibility of blistering, very itchy. Painful/tender. 

Common Causes: Poison ivy, poison oak, fragrances, dyes, and personal care products like body wash and laundry detergent.

Treatment Options: You’re going to have to figure out what’s behind the case of contact dermatitis personally occupying your specific butt, first. However, over-the-counter calamine lotion and time will help if it’s poison ivy. Removing the offending soap/detergent/lotion from your arsenal will obviously be necessary if that’s giving you an allergic reaction. Switching to fragrance-free personal care can also help. 

Intertrigo (AKA Chafing)

Symptoms: Inflammation, redness, scaling, and bacterial infections

Common Causes: Moisture and friction, mainly from the skin folds of your butt cheeks rubbing against each other

Treatment Options: Try to keep your nether regions as dry as possible. Body powder can help with that. You can also try a topical steroid cream, antibiotic cream, or antifungal cream if your healthcare provider recommends it.

Folliculitis (AKA Butt Acne)

Symptoms: Pimples—small, painful ones. 

Common Causes: Clogged or infected hair follicles.

Treatment Options: Exfoliate regularly, antibiotic ointment, benzoyl peroxide, diluted tea tree oil (you can also check out our full guide to butt acne here).

Atopic Dermatitis (AKA Eczema)

Symptoms: Red, dry, scaly, leathery patches, possibly crusty or weeping, can definitely be itchy but not necessarily.

Common Causes: Environmental allergens, wool, stress, dry air, genetics. There’s a reason eczema affects 10-25% of the population at some point in their lives. 

Treatment Options: Stress relief, cortisone cream, a humidifier, removal of the offending textile or allergen from your life.

Psoriasis

Symptoms: Red, scaly, cracked, rough. Maybe white patches on top of the red scaliness. 

Common Causes: Autoimmune condition. Your immune system is attacking your own skin cells.

Treatment Options: Steroid cream and a trip to your doctor, who can help you get to the root of this unpleasant skin rash. 

Lichen Sclerosus

Symptoms: Shiny, lighter than your normal skin tone, itchy, tends to be located near the anus. The skin may appear thinner and wrinklier than in unaffected areas.

Common causes: Autoimmune disease.

Treatment Options: Steroid/hydrocortisone cream, antibiotic ointment, and calling your doctor. Not to freak you out, but this particular butt rash can progress to squamous cell carcinoma if you ignore it. 

Fungal Infection (AKA Ringworm)

Symptoms: Red or just generally darker than your skin tone in a circle/oval/patch shape, bordered at the edge by a somewhat lighter ring.

Common Causes: Basically the same as jock itch, just moved next door from your groin area to a new home (your butt). 

Treatment Options: Changing out of your workout clothes and showering immediately, not whenever you happen to get around to it. Athlete’s foot cream. Other antifungal creams. Incidentally, preventing a fungal infection on your butt will also help keep swamp ass at bay. 

Keratosis Pilaris

Symptoms: Little red bumps. Can be almost sandpaper-like. Not itchy or painful.

Common Causes: Clogged hair follicles. 

Treatment Options: Switch to a body wash containing lactic, glycolic, or salicylic acid. Moisturize—yes, you, a dude, are going to start moisturizing your butt—with a cream or lotion containing either salicylic acid or a high percentage of urea. 

Heat Rash

Symptoms: Clusters of bright red pimples or small blisters

Common causes: Sweat clogging up your pores and sweat ducts, plus friction, results in heat rash.

Treatment Options: Use a body cleanser targeted at acne and containing benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid. Looser clothing that doesn’t chafe. Use shower wipes when you can’t shower immediately after a gym session. 

When to Worry About the Rash On Your Butt

As much as we all love to ditch doctor appointments in favor of curing our ailments via the Internet, sometimes you gotta go to an actual dermatology or general doctor’s practice. 

While some of the conditions above require interacting with a real healthcare professional, there are also some general guidelines for when it’s more than just irritated skin.

Here are reasons to seek out professional medical advice for your butt rash:

• Your rash is infected. How will you know? It’s swollen, it’s painful, and there might be fluid that looks greenish or yellowish in hue. 
• You have a fever. If you’re running a temperature in addition to dealing with a rash on your butt, it’s probably an indicator you’ve got something more severe than a case of basic butt acne. 
• The rash is everywhere. We really shouldn’t have to tell you that if you have a full-body rash, you need to see a doctor. 
• The rash is not yet everywhere but is quickly moving in that direction. A fast-spreading rash to other areas of the body likely calls for medical care. 
• The rash includes painful blisters on your anus or genitals. This could be a sexually transmitted infection (STI), like genital herpes. You’ll need a prescription for oral antiviral medication and possibly something topical, as well.

4 Tips to Prevent Butt Rashes

A butt rash is the bane of any DUDE’s existence. So here’s a crash course on how to care for your nether regions and prevent butt rash in the future:

1. Shower right after you work out and change into clean clothing.

2. Speaking of clothing, wear loose, breathable fabrics (ditch those tighty whities). 

3. Dust your butt with a talc-free body powder to wick away moisture and prevent chafing. 

4. Switch to fragrance-free laundry detergent and consider a fragrance-free body wash as well. Remember, “unscented” doesn’t actually mean fragrance-free, and you want the latter. 

Well, this has been a journey. We never thought we’d say this, but we hope everything you’ve read today helps you get back to an ass that’s as smooth AF.