Back in the old days, before bathtubs were common, people were awfully stenchy, and to hide that stenchiness, they attempted to cover it up with perfume. (Can you imagine? Rose water and lavender oil on top of weeks of body odor and greasy skin? Gag!) These days, we not only have showers and tubs, but some people use them more than once a day, and some some people feel compelled to douse themselves with so many scents (many of which compete with each other) that folks in the next county can’t breathe for all the fumes.

Last night I went out to dinner, and there was a man two tables away who obviously bought into the Axe Body Spray ads. I couldn’t eat my dinner because my nose stuffed up and I’d begun to wheeze, so I had to make profuse apologies to my date and ask our waiter to move us to another table. Of course, that’s not a perfect solution, because I belong to the one percent of the population who’s allergic to perfume. (Cheap drugstore cologne seems to fall into the same category; perhaps it’s the fixative? I’ve never known what they have in common.) And you can’t go anywhere to get away from perfume; it’s everywhere!

What people don’t seem to realize is how they shoot themselves in the feet when they overdose on perfume and cologne; aside from masking their own body scents (which Mother Nature put there to attract the opposite sex!), look at all the scents their colognes and perfumes compete with:

1. shampoo;
2. conditioner;
3. other hair products like gel, mousse, volumizer, and hair spray;
4. body soap;
5. deodorant;
6. hand cream;
7. body cream;
8. moisturizers;
9. make-up (like lipstick, lipgloss, pressed powder, etc);
10. Febreze and similar;
11. things I’ve certainly left out!

That is a LOT of scents, all before you’ve even put your cologne or perfume on! Yet even after all that, people feel compelled to squirt, spritz, spray, sprinkle, shower, spurt, douse, and mist themselves with yet more anyway. And not just a little, either, as my sensitive nose can attest: they apparently apply it to all their “pulse points”: inside the wrists, behind the ear, the throat, the backs of the knees, and inside the elbow. (cough, cough) (I’m choking as I type this.)

Let me remind you of something I typed earlier: one percent of the population is allergic to perfume. That hot guy you’re smiling at? He may flee to get his asthma inhaler as you get closer. (I’ve had this happen to me in reverse on innumerable occasions: I’ve seen some doll across the room, he’s gotten close, my throat closed up, I bolted. For all I know, one of them was my one true love!)

There’s something else to consider: that expensive (or cheap!) bottle of stuff you think is the greatest thing you’ve ever smelled? It may smell like donkey diarrhea to someone else. And maybe that “someone else” is the one you’d most like to impress.

If you simply must wear a scent (I know how it is; I wear cologne!), go easy with it. I apply it by spraying some to the end of a Q-tip, then I dab it (once!) onto the nape of my neck, and once onto the top of my breastbone. This way, in the event I encounter someone who doesn’t like it, at least I’m not a giant offensive gas cloud, and if someone does like it, he has to get closer to smell it. (Clever, no?)