Tag: Christmas gifts

My hairdresser greeted me at the door of her shop.

“You smell good!” she said.

“Thanks,” I replied. “I showered.”

If there’s anything this pandemic has taught me, it’s to be thankful for small blessings like showering and leaving your house. And since one of the symptoms of COVID-19 is loss of sense of smell, I’m adding enjoying fragrant aromas to my gratitude list.

“Seriously,” my hairdresser said. “You smell so good. What is it?”

“Tangerine-raspberry body wash, I guess,” I said, shrugging.

When I ran out of that body wash, I continued the fruity theme. Now, I smell like blueberries. I showered with blueberry-scented body wash, then slathered blueberry lotion on my winter-worn skin, and had a bowl of blueberries for breakfast. I’m starting to worry I’ll turn blue like Violet in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

Which got me thinking: Who decided that we should smell like something we had for breakfast?

On the weekends my husband makes me bacon and eggs. I’m sure he and the cats would like it if I smelled like bacon all day, but I’ll pass on the pork-scented soap.

Scented soaps, lotions and candles are bestselling gifts this time of year, but the evolution of fragrance puzzles me.

Perhaps our ancient forebears used their sense of smell to identify food that was safe to eat. Ripened apples, plums and berries smell good, week-old rotting saber-tooth, not so much. But if raw meat smells so good, why aren’t we adding that to our lotions?

If indeed fragrance appeal is based on our ancestors that probably explain men’s bath products. The store where I buy my scented soaps features a men’s line with one-word names. Forest and Ocean, I understand. But Steel and Marble? They also sell Bourbon Body Wash, but I’m afraid my husband might not use it as instructed.

Smell, like taste, is highly subjective. While some folks swoon at a bite of caviar or oyster, others gag, and since the freshness of both is supposed smell like an ocean breeze, what does that mean for our beach breeze-scented candles? I’m quite certain no one wants to walk into an oyster-scented living room, but maybe I’m wrong.

I just don’t get how the fragrance business works. For example, the cheery red candle that flickers in my entryway is called “After Sledding.” As someone who has unwrapped and unlayered four sons, post-sledding, I can assure you, that scent is more sweat than cinnamon.

Likewise, the blue candle in our bedroom is supposed to smell like “Cabana Bay Linen.” I can’t argue with that. I’ve never been to a place called Cabana Bay, nor smelled its linen.

Speaking of fabric, why do many detergents advertise that they smell like mountain air? I may not be a climber, but I have ridden lifts to the tip tops of large mountains, and the air didn’t smell that much different than it did at lower elevations. Of course, I was in tram with teenage boys doused in AXE body spray, so my nostrils may have been compromised.

Apparently, laundry detergent smells so good you can make your whole house smell like it with Gain-scented room spray. Imagine the olfactory confusion that would occur if you washed your clothes in Tide, dried them with Downy Amber Blossom dryer sheets, and spritzed Gain spray around the house?

And I’m all for seasonal themes, but I draw the line when my favorite “smell good” store wants me to smell like a pumpkin spice latte. I will gladly drink one, and enjoy a fresh slice of homemade apple pie with it, but I don’t want to bathe in those fragrances.

I guess the purists among us gravitate to all things unscented, but honestly, who wants their clothes to smell like fabric, their bodies to smell like humans, or their homes to smell like the people who live in them?

Not me.

In fact, I’m going to go hang out in my bathroom for a while.

Currently, it smells like Aloha Hawaii air freshener, which is about as close as I’m going to get to the tropics this year.