Nose Snobs and Smelly Stories: The Identity Politics of Feminine Fragrance

(Lifts her arms) Yes, I still smell like fabric softener. I'm online now trying to locate my favorite deodorant. It's disappeared from the shelves. And Whole Foods says the company has discontinued making deodorant altogether. So here I am combing the web for sites still carrying the remaining few, might I clean them out until I develop a preference for a new signature scent. Because how often does one find a scent like "wild yam" whose name and fragrance so perfectly embodies my personality both symbolically as well as olfactorily. It's natural. It's organic. It's mysterious, distinctive wild yam!

Most smells today are a barrage of man-made chemicals so widespread they've become more "natural" than natural smells themselves. Who could tell me what organic substance produces the ever so marketed scent of "spring breeze"? A potion of chemicals made popular by Proctor & Gamble in products like Downy and Secret—"strong enough for a man, but Ph balanced for a woman." Yes, balanced enough to burn a whole right through my arm. It was just at the time of puberty when odor camouflage suddenly became a necessity and clever commercial ads had me convinced my delicate preteen arms required the odor-corrective surgery only their product could provide. I've never worn such an aggressive neutralizer as propylene glycol and aluminum chlorohydrate-rich Secret. And I never will again.

But if I don't want to smell like obvious man-made chemicals I could smell like baby powder, that I did at one phase in my life, and smelled like—you guessed it—a baby. There were a plethora of deodorants and perfumes smelling like baby-bum batter which I wore up until my late teens, giving the pedophilic passerbys even more food for fodder. But as Anika Noni Rose said so fervently in Dreamgirls, "I'm a woman na!"

(Sigh) Without wild yam, it seems as though a woman wanting to smell like something safe for bodily consumption has to choose something saccharine-sweet-boring like honey or acid disinfectant like lemon, which evokes images of dishwashing liquid. Or vanilla, which evokes images of cookie-baking. Neither domestic image appeal to me. I'm wild, not domesticated.

Which leaves me to the four-star cliché of feminine fragrances—flowers. Apparently the most popular is that odiously pungent one known as lavender. There's a grown-up smell for you. (Sneeze) I guess the bigger you are, the louder you smell. A wise blogger once said, "Those who wear suspiciously loud perfumes are really insecure about the projectable range of their own personalities." Just a little "naked truth". Socially timid? Let the obnoxious fumes speak for yourself. But in all sincerity, my perfume-challenged sisters (and brothers) out there, a fine smell is like quality underwear; it should be worn for you, not others.

Yet again I digress. I ask myself, "If the selection is really so scarce why not be like the rest of the world and go o'natural?" Well, for a person rather obsessed with fragrance it's not so easy to settle for unscented. For nose nerds like me, this is life or death.

I've been there before, one year ago to be exact, when my favorite soap suddenly vanished from the shelves. This French boutique specializing in soaps and lotions based in the butter produced from the African tree Shea had a natural soothing scent. It was called Fig. Then suddenly they were gone. The high-nosed sales clerks telling me, "L'Occitane is making room for its new fragrances." New fragrances! (Coming unglued) Fragrances like obnoxious Verbena (smells like old lemon) or been-there-done-that Lavender!? But fig was so fresh, so different. So—(sniff-sniff) I smell, as the adage goes, a rat.

What is this fascist fragranicracy we are all in where we smell the same, walking lock step in line with three or four natural scents and a bunch of chemical concoctions? One company has already found a way to keep me returning to their stores for nose-related reasons and they aren't even selling perfume—Free People clothing boutique. They (along with their sister label Anthropologie) have a wonderful exotic fragrance permeating their stores. Finally, I get up the nerve to ask Free People staff what it is called, might I go out and buy, and thereby satisfying the olfactory hunger at will. "It's a potpourri that Free People has patented," the kind sales clerk informs. Not fully computing the meaning of what she has said I repeat, "So what's it called?" "It doesn't have a name," she replies, "Free People own it."

Now that's an irony if ever I heard one. Free People own this potpourri so that none of us olfactorily deprived minions can smell it anywhere but in their stores and on the clothes they sell, that is until we wash them in "spring breeze". In a word: Genius. The rest has already been said.