We’ve all seen them: The commercials depicting families as skunks, insects and warthogs. The bears wiping themselves in the woods. The man cleaning a toilet in a submarine while a castaway sniffs the scent of pine in the waters above.
It’s all part of a growing obsession with the sense of smell, and how to improve that smell using commercial preparations.
I was insulted by many of those commercials. Were they indicating, in a not-so-subtle way, that our families stink? Granted, we may not all have feet that smell of roses, or cast an ocean breeze in our wake, but do we really emanate a stench that needs remediation?
Do we need a factory-produced solution for the odor-challenged among us?
If we stink, isn’t a bath or shower the remedy? If our dirty laundry needs freshening, isn’t washing it the cure?
No, Madison Avenue tells us. The answer is not soap and water. It is instead a spray for the air, a stick or can for the armpits, powders or inserts for the shoes and feet, body sprays and body wash, scented detergents and dryer sheets for the clothes, paste and gel for the teeth, mouthwash, mints and gum for the breath, and a host of other aerosols and ointments for the areas you can’t easily see and I certainly don’t want to name.
There are a host of terms that deal with the smells — made part of common speech by those selling the cures.
Bad breath is halitosis. Your home may have houseitosis. Poor personal hygiene causes body odor or B.O.
Incidentally, it is generally assumed that the prettier you are, the better you smell.
Washing and doing laundry may be the solutions for some odors, but others are more illusive. In an old house, occasional ghosts of the past waft into the air. One of the previous owners of my home had a dog that slept under his bed. The floors have been refinished, but on certain days the scent of pooch re-emerges. A basement drain, coupled with burned toast and the indelible tang of old walls, can yield a scent that isn’t always appealing.
There are also people who claim that they can instantaneously detect the smell of a cat in a home. A litterbox is a challenge, but there are countless miracle products that guarantee to keep the evil fumes at bay.
Buying the cures, however, can be a curse in itself. Some may find that the heavy perfume of a plugged-in device can be worse than the original problem. Such devices can also overpower more subtle scents such as a lightly spiced candle, bleach used to cleanse a toilet, and the many and varied aromas of a home-cooked meal.
In one’s personal toilet (meaning preparations, not the ceramic or porcelain object), cologne may have to fight with scented dryer sheets, scented deodorant, scented detergent, scented shampoo, scented soap and even scented shaving cream.
Odors are everywhere. Call them perfume, smells, vapors, stink, stench, effluvium, emanation, fume or essence. Call them flowery, fragrant, mouthwatering, delicious, clean, redolent, pungent, malodorous, rank, overpowering, horrendous or antiseptic.
Whatever they are called, the causes and cures are legion.
Finding a balance between what you judge as good or bad can take a little homework, and will impact how you perceive yourself and others perceive you.
If you don’t mind being the weirdo who smells like pee or the gourmet who reeks of garlic, then you’ve made your odiferous bed and you can sleep in it.
Or depending on the dryer sheet you’ve chosen, you can drift off to rest in a field of lavender or the aftermath of a spring shower.
It’s up to you
Smell ya later!