Battling the Bodily Stench or Embracing the Feral and the Ripe?

Battling bad smells has been a millenia-long battle for humanity. Fighting body odor specifically has been a battle against our very own human make-up. With the exception of those carrying the gene ABCC11 (which makes for no armpit smell), common amongst the populations of the Far East,  the vast majority of us of European, African, Central Asian and Native American descent have the sort of apocrine glands in the armpit and groin which secrete a sort of sweaty liquid that when mixed with surface bacteria develops body odor. The ecrine glands, situated throughout the body, secrete just water and salt.

The quest for deodorisation brings us to the American contradiction of a malodorous past coupled with an almost sterilized present. The pioneer settlers, coming from Europe driven out for their strict Puritan religious beliefs or our sheer need for greener pastures and personal growth were not accustomed to washing up too much. Popular westerns, films chronicling the adventures of the Wild West, have long exploited this very notion, having the lone cowboy bust into the odd saloon and demand a cigar and bath in the back quarters after months of herding cattle all alone in the wilderness.

The very interesting thing however is not the invention of deodorant (and anti-perspirant, which debuted in the early 20th century based on aluminum chloride first marketed under the suggestive name Everdry) but the power of marketing. Women, American women in particular, were especially targeted in typically sexist campaigns which implied that their natural odor was repulsive to heterosexual men, therefore they had to rely on a deodorant or anti-perspirant in order to land the man of their dreams. An advertisement from the Walter Thomson Archives, at the Duke University, proclaims in the very title "Within the Curve of a Woman's Arm. A frank discussion of a subject too often avoided." Including lines asking "Would you be absolutely sure of your daintiness?" and "Does excessive perspiration ruin your prettiest dresses?" The agressive campaigns by the Odorono Company, giving their address as Ruth Miller, The Odorono Co., 719 Blair Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio, promised the "so simple, so easy, so sure" solution for that "problem", imaginary or real.

Please read the entirety of my article on Fragrantica.

Start Up Sets to Make Your Vagina Smell Like Peaches: A Feminism Issue & Then Some

There's too much brandishing around about how feminism is obsolete (apparently by women -and men- reaping the benefits of a good 3 decades of women's rights advocates fighting the cause) but some piece of news crops up and makes you rethink things. Yes, if you haven't guessed by this introduction, I'm irate. A start up is asking for funding on Tilt (their Kickstarter campaign was denied because the fund raising platform doesn't accept biotechnology projects) to market their product "Sweet Peach" which is a probiotic meant to change your vagina's natural smell into that of a ripe...peach.

A probiotic making your lady parts smelling of peach like a Bath & Body Works shower gel. OK, get me the barf bag now!

Gustave Courbet, L'Origine du Monde (1866) at Musee d'Orsay 

The project is undertaken by scientists Austen Heinz and Gilad Gome, of the biotech startups Cambrian Genomics and Personalised Probiotics respectively. Sweet Peach will use Genomic's DNA printing technology into manipulating the odor made by micro-organisms that live in the vagina of a woman. They state the practical benefit of avoiding yeast infections but they also state this controversial claim: "The idea is personal empowerment" as "all your smells are not human. They're produced by the creatures that live on you. We think it's a fundamental human right to not only know your code of the things that live on you but also to write your own code and personalize it." And they continue by stating that "The pleasant scent is there to connect you to yourself in a better way" (but it also serves as a sort of function indicator). 

Which makes me so very surprised to see that they're also partnering on Petomics, a probiotic for dogs and cats that would make their feces smell like....bananas! 

Right, because pet's feces's odor and the odor of a healthy woman's vagina are on the same plane of values. 

The fact that the two scientists are male did raise a feminist antenna or two. Why not focus on something more universal, dudes? Like feces? Everyone poops, after all. The explanation was that the gut micro-biome is more complex, whereas the vaginal one is stabler, being upset via the period's "interference" only once a month (Hmm, hey guys, I have news for you!). 

But apparently the story is even more fucked up!  

The founder of the company, a 20 year old woman (and a "ultrafeminist" as per own her claim), Audrey Hutchinson, says that the vision of the product was totally different: aiding women to manage their reproductive health without the need of doctors or clinics (or even help the microflora fight HIV, as one company envisions this whole new frontier!). The male dudes, Heinz and Gome, collaborate on Petomics, while Heinz is only a 10% share holder in the Sweet peach project, which he unveiled in a public forum at the San Jose DEMO conference without quoting Hutchinson and even without notifying her beforehand!

But the thing isn't whether the dudes made a publicity blunder and a PR screwup which had the Internet up in arms about  it. They unquestionably have. 

But Gome has been put into record talking about hacking the micro-biome to "make her vagina smell like roses and taste like Diet cola". And Heinz had also explained his general logic by saying "We think on an airplane you're breathing 90 percent farts, right? So it'd be good if they were good-smelling." Talk about "la negation de la mort par le fast food". 

The thing is that there still are straight men out there who believe a healthy, average woman's vagina smells bad. Makes one nostalgic about the 1970s when American Cosmopolitan advised its sexually uninhibited readers to put a drop of vaginal juice behind their ears to attract a mate...

And there's this small little detail too: Nazi-odor-selection. Peach...bananas...coke. Who decided only fruity or edible scents are good smelling?

Long time readers remember our articles on Perfume Shrine which focused on how the industry shaped the market by hitting them on the head with fruity scents for at least a decade, mainly through the abomination of Bath & Body Works synth flavors incorporated into body products such as deodorants, shower gels, body lotions etc. 

If perfumery has long tried to emulated the odor di femina, with all its loaded innuendo perpetuated in literature, the arts and philosophy, such as in Shocking perfume by Elsa Schiaparelli or Ambre Sultan (Lutens) technology is reversing the tables by subtracting it and adding something totally inhuman. I'd say, get these start-ups some odor specialist and call it a day.