There’s Something Decidedly Smelly Going On Here
After the holidays comes the deluge. I refer not to an apocalyptic event but to the immense gallonage of perfumes, colognes and lotions freshly delivered to the general public.
Get on an office-building elevator in the morning and the reek is a cross between brothel and stable, with a hint of locker room thrown in. This olfactory assault raises a human-rights issue: If we recognize the respiratory sanctity of the non-smoker, what about the rights of the anti-sniffer?
The problem of atmospheric attack persists year round, but it is especially intense when holiday gift recipients en masse undertake public experimentation with their aromatic collections. The advertisements for these products suggest that through odoriferous mayhem one may engage in silent communication. If that’s only a bit true, a formal inquiry into American office life may be in order, for there can be no compatibility between these communications and a reasonable level of productivity.
An examination of texts and illustrations accompanying the packaged smells shows that most can be accounted for by a few hallucinatory categories, none of which has anything to do with what’s supposed to go on in offices.
In perfume products the theme of aromatically induced quick loss of control runs strong, having surpassed the old mainstay of scent discreetly leading to exploratory flirting. Also strong is the theme of inner conflict between unsullied innocence and awakening desire. Common settings are candlelit seaside balconies and bedrooms heavy on the satin. How this fits in at a word-processing station is not explained.
Colognes and other aromatic products specifically aimed at men tend toward macho themes. In contrast to the advertisements for women’s scents, the ads for men’s products seem to be out of touch with the real world. Quite often the illustrations for male aromas pair the bottle with a horse or two. Fortunately, the contents do not follow that theme. Tree cuttings also figure prominently among the male cologne copywriters, as do big wet dogs. But in the latter case the cologne blenders wisely have not tried to imitate nature. Their restraint will be appreciated by anyone who has shared a rainy-day ride in a closed car with a damp retriever.
The mystery of communication by scent keeps arising. What is my insurance agent, for example, trying to tell me when he emits the aroma of gardenias and allspice, a scent associated by advertisements with a horse stable? What are you supposed to think about a bank teller who smells like orange blossoms? What’s the message from a waiter whose aromatic “signature” is reminiscent of grated coconut and cherry soda?
Who can decipher what’s really going on around a committee table when the air is redolent of bananas, rum, hot saddles, licorice, seaweed and lemonade? There are messages here, we have been told, embodied in scents suggestive of uncontrollable sexual upheavals, the lumber industry, steaming horses and wet dogs. But what does it all mean?
The issue comes down to aromatic liberation. The first step for the movement would be down the path successfully blazed by the anti-smokers: No-aroma seating on airlines, in restaurants and other public places.
As established in common-law principles governing assault and battery, your right to smell like a shoeshine or a fresh fruit salad ends where my nose begins.
