Thou Shalt Not…

“Are the body’s natural smells so bad that they need to be covered up?” you ask. Maybe not but society today (or is it just Madison Avenue?) has made us THINK we should make sure nothing natural shows up in the air we breathe. I mean if you watch TV nowadays we are assaulted with commercials trying to get us to wipe out all naturally occuring odors, be they dog, cooking, gym shoe, cat box, whatever with Febreeze, scented candles, Lysol Spray, whatever. etc., ad nauseum.

Like you, I hate cloying scents that swill around people in a cloud that often preceeds their entry into a room and outlasts them when they leave but I will admit I DO enjoy wearing a LIGHT scent – the key word here being LIGHT. That means light enough to be undetectable unless you are hug/kiss close and not intrusive and overwhelming. Personally I feel semi undressed unless I have some sort of scent on and even though when at home for the day I never wear makeup, I DO wear scent for my own pleasure because I may be half blind with nearsightedness without my glasses and slightly hard of hearing (in the high range) but damn, my scense of smell is acute and it is comstantly craving stimulation, be it that morning pot of Vanilla Coffee (or Raspberry Chocolate, or Irish Cream) teasing my taste buds as I wait for it to brew or the tantilizing smells of a pot roast cooking, or the scent of a mandarin orange as you peel it.

Taste is closely linked to smell and so with food that’s a good thing. I cannot truly say that I have ever “tasted” that cloying perfume that some women (and men) wear but I sure as hell have almost TASTED the body odor of some people whose pores seem to ooze onion, garlic, curry, or whatever other chemical from their food that their bodies are trying to expell through their skin or lungs and we won’t even get into plain ordinary sweaty body odor which I personally find more nauseatingly objectionable if I am forced to endure it in a closed space than any perfume.

I DO understand allergies – Heaven knows I have a few of those myself – and if I have ever triggered anyone’s allergies I truly and humbly apologize – Mea Culpa – but I suspect that I have rarely done this due to my awareness of how much is too much – something that many people do NOT understand.

Scent is magical. It can transport you to another place and time and trigger memories (good and bad) that register as strongly as being there, at least for me. Some scent memories can make me close my eyes and be a kid again. In Winnipeg there is a sugar beet refinery across the river (miles away) but in the winter when we were outside at recess we used to smell the evidence of them working – a smell exactly like baked potato smell and now every time I bake a potato I think of cold crisp sunny days on the playground when I was about 9 or 10 years old. The same is true for the scent of fall – yes it has it’s own special scent – that makes me think of walking to school at the beginning of a new school year when the leaves are turning and the mornings are chilly and slightly damp. How about the smell of burning leaves and grass – something I AM allergic to if I can’t get out of it like when the farmers burn their stubble off the fields – in small doses it makes me think of the lake and people who used to rake their yard waste into the ditch and burn it. These are for the most part good memories but scent can also trigger the bad ones… the chemical, so called “hospital smell” that you can still smell when entering older institutions that may bring bad thoughts of dying loved ones or painful 1st hand experiences as a patient or perhaps a whiff of a scent an old boyfriend/girlfriend used to wear in a relationship that ended badly. The memories are no less vivid when triggering the bad ones.

Scent is powerful, invasive, overwhelming, and a part of life. We need to learn how to embrace it’s power and yet not use it as a weapon. We need to know when one person’s pleasure become another’s revulsion. It’s almost impossible today to be totally scentless since almost every toiletry has its own scent and scentless products are rare to say the least although they do now sell unscented detergants and a few other soaps but try to find a scentless shampoo. I think the key lies in being aware of our surroundings and where we will be affecting others in our “smell zone”. If we take the bus, lose the heavy perfume and if you must wear a scent, instead use scented talc or body wash that leave a light hint of scent that only you may be aware of and not the whole bus/office/elevator etc. and when you are in an intimate situation, make sure the object of your affection actually LIKES the scent you know they will be very aware of in a clinch.

In conclusion, wearing scent is a personal thing but it comes with the responsibility of making sure you RESPECT the all too often captive noses of those around you if you choose to indulge.

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And also I would love to know why is Sarah Palin a tag for this post?

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