Is perfume political? You bet!

In times such as ours every single matter that entails a minimum of two people has to make it through the media circuit and perfume is not an issue that has been left off the equation either.
It might seem rather heavy and ominous to title my post “is perfume political?”, because what reference does perfume have to political parties or administrations and so on and so forth? Let me explain myself.

In ancient Greek the term “polis” referred to the city states of classical antiquity. In those the voting system was not representational, but direct and frequent, due to such factors as lack of manual labour that would consume hours (slaves were doing it), closeness of people to the voting centre (the whole state was just the city), small percentage of active voting population anyway. Hence decisions were made on everything by “polites”, aka free citizens directly (the word derives from the Latin “civitas” which also means city). That entailed whether ships would get built for merchandising, who would be the committee to decide on theatrical competitions or whether the city would go to war with another city-state; and then indeed voting on such seemingly trivialities as whether they should allow preening or depilation to slave women (apparently not and it was a sore point for them).
You see my point. Everything becomes political in that sense. An active citizen who is considered an integral part of society (and they were adamant on the participation in decision-making on penalty of exile) has to take a stance on a wide diversity of matters pertaining to that society. This is a theoretical position of admirable conscientiousness. If only people were that active today instead of apathetic to what is happening around them…..

However that notion can get hued in sinister nuances still. And it has to do with that most ephemeral yet subconsciously influential matter of all: the olfactory stimulus.
Witness the case of a woman in Calgary, Canada, as reported by the Globe and Mail.com, who was asked by not one, but two different bus drivers to abandon the bus if they were to go on with their routes, because of her “offending” perfume.
Although I am tempted to give a good break down on said perfume (it was Very Irresistible by Givenchy) and why it would have such a dramatic effect, I feel that the core of the issue is more complex than just attributing it to overapplication or dislike of that specific composition by the bus drivers.
Reading the article and seeing the photo of Natalie Kuhn, a 25 year old chiropractic assistant I saw a pleasantly turned out black woman who seems tidy, professional and groomed and would be unlikely to wear such copious amounts of any fragrance, especially since her fellow bus passengers did not complain. Although the quote that making her sit at the back of the bus made her feel like “a modern day Rosa Parks” might seem a little excessive (hopefully we’re past such despicable lows in human dignity) it does seem that the repetition of the incident with a different driver was humiliating and a little suspect in itself, especially so as the first occurrence had already been publicized.

The matter takes on another political nuance as it is linked to the invasion of other people’s privacy as witnessed by the perfume ban on all municipal buildings at Halifax. The rhetoric behind this is that “with rising rates of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, irritants in the air can have a greater effect”. Of course health is a very serious matter and it is true that there has been an increasing percentage of asthma and pulmonary afflictions that are triggered by irritants in the air in the western world. However one would have good cause to pause for thought and wonder whether those irritants are mainly comprised of chemical substances in exhaust fumes, toxic substances in cleaning products and the ubiquity of artificially scented matter all around us in a consumerist world that uses the olfactory to sell more product inundating our perception and leaving us unable to take it anymore. Does everything from bleach to erasers to stationary to dry-cleaners’ bags has to be scented, I wonder?
Would cutting down on those, offer a palate free to enjoy an occasional whiff of a nice perfume on somebody? I think that it would.

There is also the issue of modern day perfumes being comprised almost in their entirety of synthetic aroma-chemicals (and it is sadly obvious that Very Irresistible is one of them), not much different than those used in the cleaning products industry which contribute to a catch in the throat reaction for many people who have obviously reached their limit and are justifiably (according to them, at least) embarking on Philippics against perfume en masse. Nevertheless the issue of re-introducing natural essences is neither economically viable in a market that is in to make as much as possible in the here and now domain nor practically doable with all the recent developments of which I have blogged about in the recent past.

The following comment cited in The Globe and Mail article made an impression of irrelevancy to me and I am sure I am not the only one: “Roedy Green, who said he has “a very keen sense of smell,” believes people often don't realize how much perfume they're putting on. The worst offenders are older people whose sense of smell has faded, he said, leading them to pour on perfume until they match the way they remember smelling as a youth”. Surely that does not apply to this specific case of Natalie Kuhn who is only 25 years of age and probably in full functional capacity of her olfactory abilities? Or is this a general bash against people who like to put on perfume perhaps a little more enthusiastically (to put it politely)? It seems so.
The accompanying comments from lots of readers who are almost all of them condemning the wearing of perfume is very revealing and just a bit foreboding on the direction the public is getting their opinion shaped.

On the other hand there is the opposite field of perfume enthusiasts who are not eager to back off their habit and sometimes provocatively insist in crude terms to carry on with impunity offending colleagues, fellow public transport passengers, and close friends and family, oblivious to the fact that toning it down a bit would result in a greater leniency from those perfume haters and thus would guarantee the continuation of the noble practice of perfuming. Ms. Natalie Kuhn did display such an obstinate stance, in my opinion, perhaps on the premise that it was her right to wear what she likes and assured in the knowledge that no policy allows drivers to refuse passengers because of their scent. Nevertheless the repercussions of such an incident might tilt the balance not in her favour and to the detriment of all of us perfume lovers. Is it far off the day when a general perfume ban would be introduced on all public transport, thereby practically eradicating our right to scenting ourselves lest we have a private vehicle (and it shouldn’t be a convertible missy, mind you!!)? We have to stop and wonder: if smokers -who have been also practically exiled from civilised society in recent years due to their habit- had been a little more considerate and less headstrong about their right to light up whenever and wherever and all present company be damned, would we have reached a point where they are the outcast of society? I think not.

For that reason and with that reasoning, I would pray for a little compromise on both sides of the argument.

Painting is "Demosthenes practising oratory" by Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Glorious stink

The ebb and flow of human taste and its modus operandi is an undecipherable commodity. What is considered appealing and desirable and what is not doesn’t obey any quantitative measure. Which of course accounts for trends, market research and lost fortunes in wrong assumptions side by side with the successful lucky guesses.
The same applies to smell and fragrance. More pointedly so when the aromas emanating from someone are of a more intimate nature.

Ever since the dawn of humanity homo sapiens has shared the biological fate of his ancestors in the olfactory field. His sense of smell has primarily directed him to opt for the healthy game and fresh produce and avoid the stale and rotten. It is also possible that it has directed him via odorata sexualis to suitable mates through which procreation might be consummated with the imperceptible help of pheromones, aroma materials that are emanated by individuals to attract. For millennia man has been content to do just that.

And then civilization came into the picture. In the great civilizations of antiquity such as Egypt, Greece and Rome, the desire to distance oneself from the animal nature and embrace the humane, as manifested in science, philosophy and the arts, has made man take measures as to maintain a level of cleanliness that is beyond the mere necessity of survival. All those civilizations have been very hygienic indeed, if we take into mind that there was no running hot water and no bubble baths in a million permutations.
Yet Herodotus talks about how the ancient Egyptians of his time bathed regularly shaving their body hair and even their scalps as to not let perspiration nestle in intimate parts of the body and fester bacteria (OK, he did not use the word bacteria precisely). How they had inward lavatories for their needs and how they took pains to maintain hygiene there. How they used sweet scented oils and incense to accompany the dead to their last dwelling place on earth.
The Greeks were by no means less clean. They too -living in a warm climate- had been taking regular baths using silver and golden basins followed by massage with aromatic oils of thyme and basil at every possible occasion, cleaning their clothes in the rivers with ash and aromatic herbs as described in the Odyssey and equating hygiene with sanity and longevity. Numerous are the mythological tales of gods and goddesses taking baths while mortals gazed hidden. It was Galenos who invented the first bar of soap mixing crushed flower petals, olive oil and ash from burnt logwood.
Ancient Rome was the apex of public baths, in which people of all ages intermingled and talked about state matters in elaborate buildings divided in unctuarium (where they chose the unguents with which they would groom themselves), the frigidarium (cold bath) and the caldarium (hot bath) and then on to the labrum for the final cold shower.
Even lavender that clean smelling herb is named after the roman word for bathing, because of its ubiquitous use.
The tradition of the bath as a civilization index is no more apparent that in Tacitus’ opus Germania where he mentions with some disdain that Germanians, considered barbarians at the time, bathed in rivers. At least they did bathe! Which is more than can be said for the squalor and filth in which Medieval Europe lived for centuries after the fall of Rome.

While Islam reveled in the luxuries of bathing (aided by the religious prerequisite to clean one’s head, hands and feet before every prayer, a phenomenon that occurs with frequent regularity throughout the day), western Europe inaugurated a practice of not washing up one’s body at all, for which the church can be found to be a great culprit.
Maintaining that mixed baths (as were previously tentatively explored) were corrupting the soul and that tending to one’s genitals might lead to impure thoughts, they condoned the absence of bath as a means of chastity while at the same time they traditionally equated holiness with the sweet smell of myrrh and incense. How those two could co-exist is beyond me, but this is not the only paradox one comes up against if one explores the matter further.

It was as late as 1750 according to Alain Corbin and his book “Le Miasme and la Jonquile”, which explores the adventure of sanitation and the desodorisation of society, that the élite chose to distance itself from the foul stench of the gutters and disease that were abundant in the crowded -by then- cities of France. A taste for the aroma of deer musk or of catty civet and of pure country air mingled in what was to become the height of French perfumery. The impression of cleanliness underscored by the reminder that we are all human, full of smells that could be perceived as disgusting in their pure state.
However perfumes seemed to be necessary still to repel the germs and bacteria through their cleansing properties as the tradition of filth continued, albeit a bit subdued: at least the clothes were as freshly clean as possible.
Louis XIV was said to have only bathed two times in his whole long life despite asking his guests and courtesans to wear a different perfume every day and the mere thought disgusts us today, earning a reputation of filth for Frenchmen which sadly has not been totally shifted if I judge by the miniscule pieces of sanitary paper that come out - one at a time!!- through the automatic devices at French toilets today.
On the other hand there was also an allure of the animalic and forbidden in similar practices when Napoleon infamously wrote to Josephine: “Je reviens en trois jours; ne te laves pas!” (I return in three days; don’t wash yourself).
The pair of them began a vogue for heavier smells as Josephine was madly in love with the smell of musk, to the point that her boudoir at Malmaison still has an aura of the aromatic essence present. Napoleon on the other hand preferred her in violets.

The Victorian age reveled in pure and simple smells as a contrast to the more decadent Empire style, using single floral waters (soliflores) for men and women alike. But it was the Puritans more than anyone else that began the hysteria for cleanliness with their desire to eliminate all traces of animalic tendencies from man. Sadly this is an insurmountable task, as the human body has to produce bile and bacteria to break down food which accounts for a smell that cannot be completely eradicated however hard one tries.
Indoor plumbing and hot water at the click of a button made taking baths an easy and swift procedure that is as an automatic reflex for today’s men and women as brushing one’s teeth. Technological progressions made the manufacture of industrial strength deodorants to put under one’s armpits as a necessity of every day life that is a god sent if you’re ever stuck up in a crowded underground wagon on a hot day of August. Perfumed products in an array of mind arresting variety are manufactured to lure as in and buy more, more, more…

And yet in all that progress we seem to have lost what has once been ours in ancient years: the conjugation of mind and body, the clean with the human.
The examples of complete perfume bans in offices in latter days, the denial of the sensual and natural in favour of the sanitized and deodorized has permeated every single aspect of today’s life. Everything around us is artificially scented with a chemical aroma that defies every law of nature. We scrub fanatically to remove any trace of human smell from our bodies and then we apply perfumed products that would supposedly give us back what nature intended to give us in order to attract a mate. We seek to find “clean” but at the same time “sexy” smells. Above all we do not want to offend. Being accused of smelling of body odour is the height of mortification for anyone beyond infancy. (since kids do not really “smell”; there have to be sexual hormones at play to do that…)
In an overcrowded planet that has no room for any more bodies, this was to be expected.
And this is what accounts for the recent resurgence of perfumes that aim to regress in the stink and funk of our human condition: from the goat-y magnificence of Muscs Kublai Khan by enfant gaté Serge Lutens to the dirty smell of Kiehl’s Musk eau de toilette and from the soft caress of a slightly sweaty body that has been active in human activities of L’air de rien by Miller Harris (with the collaboration of Jane Birkin) to the gimmicky Sécretions magnifiques by état libre d’Orange which recalls semen and blood (sounds the recipe for some tabloid article)…

It is clear that one yearns for what one is denied of. And the reason why isn’t very hard to see.


Artwork by Patric Boivine for CGnetworks.com