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December 28, 2006

The Sweet Smell of Obsession: The Past

It's officially official. I have a new obsession: perfume.

Every few years I get obsessed with something new. I was obsessed with dogs, I was obsessed with cats, I was obsessed with exercising and gardening (but not at the same time). Most recently, I was (and am) an obsessed birdwatcher.

None of these interests have ever really faded, except perhaps for the exercising, but in that I'm completely blameless. My sister borrowed my favorite exercise tapes two years ago and hasn't yet returned them. This lack of strenuous physical activity has absolutely nothing to do with my inherent laziness and lack of motivation. (Hey, I worked out almost daily for over six years and I still have the defined triceps and biceps to prove it - somewhere, anyway.)

Just so you know my scent history, in the past, I always wore perfume. Even as a little girl, I would steal spritzes of my mother's Coty's Muguet des Bois (lily of the valley) cologne and wear it to second grade. I still remember my classmate Reynaldo Vega telling me how nice I smelled and how happy that compliment made me. Positive reinforcement is key to developing habits, both good and bad, and fragrance was becoming a habit. (Ah, the power of men - very little ones included - to influence a woman's decisions!)

Anyway, I soon graduated to dousing myself with other fine drugstore brands. I remember going to the pharmacy after one of my confirmation classes when I was 11 and buying a bottle of Coty's Clover with my very own money. It was a big deal because I had to ask the old lady sourpuss clerk to get it out from the glass cabinet behind the cash register - scary!

And of course, since it was the 1970s, there was plenty of Love in the air: Love's Fresh Lemon, Love's Baby Soft, Love's Rain, and Love's Soft Musky Jasmine, which I ended up wearing throughout my teenage years. There was also 4711, everyone's favorite cheap cologne. (I like a fragrance that looks like you should drink it - the container resembles a fancy liquor bottle, with its little fake seal that you have to break open and everything. And, in the 18th and 19th centuries, you were actually encouraged to drink 4711 by its makers. Well, it's one way to empty a bottle of fragrance quickly.)

In my twenties and thirties, I upgraded to slightly more upscale brands. I wore Estee Lauder's Knowing and Beautiful (neither of which I like today), Dior's Diorissimo (my love affair with lily of the valley continued) and something called Privilege for Women by Parfums Privilege. There were also cheap little colognes picked up on sale from Bath & Body Works with names like Field of Flowers and Wood Lily and numerous bath sprays that matched my scented shower gels. I'm not sure if what I sprayed on myself actually smelled like "waterfresh breezes" or "wild blossoms," but I was willing to give them a try for the names alone.

In the late 1990s, I would wear Clinique's Happy and Tommy Hilfiger's Tommy Girl to work. I luckily got to smell Tommy Girl again just a few days ago when my almost-used-up bottle broke in the bathroom when I was looking for something in my medicine cabinet. Tommy Girl actually works pretty well as an bathroom air freshener, but I think I still prefer Open-Window-Fresh Swiffer as my exclusive floor fragrance. (And it's cheaper, too.)

But my boyfriend told me he didn't like perfume and I got out of the habit of wearing fragrance. So my scented world shrank and dwindled to the almost non-existent smell of the powder-fresh deodorant under my arms. Perhaps I had put too much stock in the opinions of men (very little ones included). But things were going to change!

Posted by oko at 04:20 PM | Comments (0)