The Scent of Busybody-ness
Americans who have our best interests in mind, bless their busybody hearts, have brought the tobacco companies to their knees. They’ve purged the booze advertisements out of family publications and stigmatized the idea of social drinking. They’ve done a pretty good job of getting peanuts off airline menus and out of some school lunchrooms, lest someone have an allergic reaction.
Now, they’re out to save us from the evils of ... perfume and after-shave in public places.
I’m sorely tempted to roll my eyes, but I’m too late. The matter has become Way Serious.
Anna M. Virtue, who is the researcher for this column, brought this backlash against perfume to my attention after she found herself visiting Community Church in Miami Beach. She was surprised to see two rows of seats labeled “no-perfume pew.” It seems that a notable parishioner objected to fragrance in the presence of the divine.
Virtue inquired and discovered not a novelty but a whole anti-fragrance movement spreading through the land. Some Sierra Club chapters, presumably content with progress on other fronts, have taken up the cause of outlawing second-hand perfume in public. Halifax, Nova Scotia, has established fragrance-free policies in public buildings. California’s Marin County, of course, has signed up to require perfume and non-perfume seating in restaurants.
A whole body of science and government research has come to bear in support of the idea that secondhand fragrance is a public hazard. According to the Earth Action Network, the Louisiana State University Medical Center blamed perfume for 20% of asthma attacks afflicting 14.6 million Americans. “One in five Americans may experience harm from fragrance exposures!” warns the Human Ecology Action League.
An industry journal has alerted restaurant owners. Secondhand perfume is the new tobacco. Alas, the crusade has become too important to poke fun at. We can ask, however: Where does it end? How far will we go to restrict what we do, and what we expose each other to, in the name of our common welfare?
America thinks nothing--or nothing but good--about heaping taxes on tobacco and liquor because busybodies frown on these substances and argue that drinkers and smokers add to the social costs of health care. Can a health tax or ban on fatty, salty foods be far behind? There are active movements to stigmatize and make us pay penalty taxes for greasy snacks and meat and probably a bunch of other things that are nobody’s business. Or everybody’s business, depending on how you look at it.
Even the size of our dinner plates is under attack. According to the publication Nation’s Restaurant News, one public interest organization wants to outlaw the serving of large portions of food because the industry “should bear some responsibility for its contribution to obesity, heart disease and cancer.”
Just this week, I read an essay by a man who thought that people who kept their weight and cholesterol down should get a federal tax credit. And, by the emerging logic, why not? If your waistline stays below, say, 25% of your IQ, you get $10; how about it?
Pollen allergies are even more widespread than perfume allergies. Should we be required to collectively dig up our lawns and flower beds? You can’t have a barking dog that keeps the neighbors awake. Why should they suffer roses and Bermuda grass that make them sneeze all day? Why not regulate what nurseries can sell?
Yes, I’m late catching on to this trend. But instead of rolling my eyes, I’m thinking of joining up. I’ve got some busybody ideas of my own.
I’d be willing to pay a quarter more for an order of French fries and I’ll call the haz-mat hotline to dispose of my sweet-smelling--read, dangerously perfumed--Dial soap if you’ll join me in fighting one of the leading causes of illness in America: hypertension. Remember, asthma is bad, but heart disease is our No. 1 killer.
To reduce our collective blood pressure, here are just a few things we could outlaw or mercilessly overtax or forbid in public places:
* Motorcycles. Doesn’t it give you palpitations to see these guys wriggle out of traffic? And the intolerable racket!
* SUVs. Sorry, but you guys really make our blood boil when you loom near so we cannot see down the road or around corners. If you’ve got to have one, keep it at home with the whiskey bottles.
* Children who cry, squeal or run in the aisles. After perfume and cigarette smoke, is there anything more apt to grate the nerves than a kid who acts like one in public?
* Oh yes, democracy. The way we argue, yell and get red in the face all the time, surely this can’t be good for us.
