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4 Seduction and Subversion Gender and Smell Smell and gender are inextricably connected, as usually becomes apparent early in most histories of perfume. Edwin Morris, to take one example , begins his history of fragrance with the admission that he initially “felt embarrassed” at the outset of his research, as the subject appeared trivial to members of the general public, who generally regarded scent as “a pleasant extravagance for women to indulge in during their leisure hours.”1 His views soon changed upon recognizing the importance of fragrance in determining , for example, behavior and trade in human history.2 Nevertheless, his attempt to justify scent as a field worthy of study remains highly gendered. To Morris, its importance as a field of study stems largely from the fact that it eventually drew the attention of the great—read male—“technical minds,” who grappled with ways to categorize, extract, and preserve prized essences. With references to “fathers” of botany and Nobel Prize–winning male chemists , the subject is as quickly masculinized by other writers who were hesitant to enter what was perceived to be a feminine domain. According to another perfume historian, Frances Kennett, women were attracted to perfumery “out of an abiding interest in looking attractive,” men “out of an increasing interest in science.”3 Success in the industry, after all, depended on even the most skilled perfumers keeping their noses “attuned to feminine fancies.”4 “Perfume,” as historian Richard Stamelman states, also inherently “speaks the body”5 —most often the female body, but in altered form.6 The belief that women specifically embody perfume is a very early or “primitive conception .”7 Scents usually announce female presence, and a choice of fragrance has permitted wearers to modify that individual signature. The sixth-century cs 114 . CHAPter 4 Kama Sutra claimed explicitly that beauty was determined by odor, not physical appearance. Writers ever since have reduced past loves to single, memorable scents, which continually return and “resurrect encounters” whether we like it or not.8 A horrible stench, on the other hand, similarly refined identity and frequently precluded the act of union between individuals. “Through a language of airborne shouts and whispers,” perfume and putrescence, both real and imagined, have defined the sexes, and primarily female character, across broad chronological periods. In ancient Greece fragrances marked men as pliant or effeminate while others effectively distinguished between types of women—young or old, married or unwed. Just as it distinguished between the civilized and the savage, aroma was readily used to elevate or demean women, as examples in this chapter indicate. Whether in ancient Rome or Victorian London, prostitutes were associated with a standard derogatory repertoire of odors as were early modern witches and old women. Sweet, often floral, sensory epithets used to describe the Virgin Mary, on the other hand, firmly underscored her exalted place in heaven. Occasionally such symbolism extended to mothers and cleaning ladies, “wielding brushes and pails,” who were variously praised as “unambiguously virtuous,” their abilities to achieve “pure households” implying “moral strenuousness.”9 The former pungent put-downs, however, were far more common than any fragrant flattery, accentuating the observation that “we never hear much about female abhorrence for male odors.”10 According to German dermatologist and sexologist Iwan Bloch, this was previously explained away as the result of man’s “stronger olfactory sense,” making him “more susceptible to the female odor than she is to his.”11 Although this explanation has not stood the test of time, in the battle of the sexes, men tended to come out smelling of roses, if anything at all. Thus it has been suggested that women have been as frequently subjected to a “male nose” as they have to the more familiar, predatory “male gaze.”12 Smell might equally have proved a false indicator and confused audiences. There are, of course, smells that were traditionally regarded as very masculine, while others were less clearly defined. This chapter returns the reader to a variety of historical contexts where such peculiarities were less clear or only beginning to be outlined with clarity. As such, the distinction between male and female scents emerges as a relatively recent invention in the long history of perfume. Only in the last couple of decades have perfumers attempted to reintroduce consumers to unisex, let alone queer, scents. Moreover, while in the last century the perfume industry may have employed disproportionate numbers of male scientists to improve rates of extraction and build global [18.218.127.141] Project...

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