Scent of a Woman
It’s February and the Month of Love and I will continue the Valentine theme and ponder for a while Fragrant Women.
Isn’t it the greatest joy to be wandering down the streets, mind cast adrift, perhaps worrying about the job, when to pay the bills, cursing that extra inch or two around your waist, when from out of nowhere comes the fragrant aroma of a woman passing by? Maybe it’s a perfume that’s instantly recognisable like Body Shop White Musk, or some other exotic and expensive perfume. But one whiff can instantly change the colour and tone of your day and for the better. The whole reason for this blog is that this morning I was walking behind a female in the slipstream of her scent and I must admit it was wonderful, I would have followed her to the ends of the earth, but we got to my office building first.
This event however, seems to be happening less and less. That momentary sensual, sensory experience is a rare happening. In China, for example, where I am right now, the women do not seem to go in for such chemical warfare. I don’t think my nose is wearing out and I am losing my sense of smell. I think in the West, along with wearing makeup, the use of female perfume has been assigned to the feminist dustbin. In my humble and male opinion this is a huge mistake on behalf of all women.
As I understand human behaviour, one thing that attracts us to each other is a heady cocktail of scents emanating from our bodies. I know the initial reaction is to go eeuu. But it’s a fact of life. However far we want to remove ourselves from being animalistic the fact of the matter is that we are right there with the warthog, the groundhog and the hedgehog. Like them, nothing can turn us on faster than the exotic whiff of a female ready for a little action in the next burrow. It’s the pheromones we all emit, hogs, dogs and humans, that make us attractive to the opposite sex.
As we are a little more advanced than the friendly little hedgehog with the snuffly nose we have designed better and more advanced scents than a quick spray of the secretions from the scent glands (i.e. arses) of civets and musk deer (still used in the perfume industry today – yes, go on eeww.) There are a whole range of wonderful perfumes, scents and sprays available down at the local store, so why are women not wearing them?
There are women, however, that wear perfume that replicates a gas attack on the Western Front. It leaves us choking and gasping for breath. It wraps itself around the female like an invisible cloak of death asphyxiating all who get within six feet. (For me Christian Dior’s Poison is like this, I think I am allergic to it as it makes me feel ill – it really is Poison).
And some women (why am I thinking French here?) seem to think stale sweat is the odour d’amour, perhaps it’s something to do with all those unshaven armpits? Look, we all know sweat is meant to be sexy, all those pheromones again, but a quick swipe with a scented roll on wouldn’t do much harm would it or a deodorant spray? Some of these smell nice, but they don’t have the longevity or the length, if you know what I mean of real perfume. For us men to get that allusive fragrance that makes us stop and sniff, it needs to travel, to drift, to float gently into our nostrils, and the cheaper stuff just doesn’t. Maybe the cheap stuff is okay in London when one is stuffed up against someone’s armpit on the tube, but the good stuff is essential for the full olfactory experience and the long distance ahhh effect.
English women are meant to be the most fragrant on the whole planet. I have it on good authority that once in the blue moon when they take a shit is smells of roses. But I am afraid that they may be losing their crown. And by not having a scented signature they may also be losing their history. What do I mean by this? I mean that smell and memory seem to be connected. How often can a single tingle in the nose of some faint delicate aroma remind us of places and people past? I can remember the scents of my past girlfriends and wives when I come across the aroma again. The scents they used, their favourite perfume, their signature, is engraved somewhere in the recesses of my mind and one small whiff can bring them instantly to mind, filling one's consciousness with happy memories. (Because, however these relationships finished we were happy together and in love – once upon a time.)
So, thank you, to the unknown woman this morning, who unknowingly, through the simple act of spraying on a perfume made this man happy. And perhaps some females out there might rethink their non use of perfume and make the world a more fragrant place coloured with the alluring scent of a woman.
