Scent

So right now I want to go all Andy Rooney on the subject of armpits.

I recently went to a drugstore to get myself some stick deodorant.  You know, the containers that allow you to stuff aluminum into your armpits, so that people around you won’t faint if you’re stuck in crowded elevator.

I like the unscented deodorant because it seems to me that the whole point of deodorant is to be unscented.  Plus, being unscented permits the option of adding the scent of your choice, if scent seems desirable.  (I’m fond of Chanel For Men, myself.)

Anyway, there was no unscented deodorant at the drugstore.  No unscented anywhere, on any shelf, any brand.

So I checked out the scents available, just in case any of them were by Chanel, and I discovered that deodorants now have hip, cool names meant to convey excitement and attract the younger crowd, but which are basically meaningless.  When you had scents like Lime or Bay Rum or Old Spice, you sort of knew where you stood.  But now you can smell like Black Ice, or Fresh Rush.

After popping the caps and giving a quick sniff, I quickly discovered that I did not want to small like Black Ice, or for that matter Fresh Rush.  Despite my enjoyment of aquatic adventure, I didn’t want to smell like Ocean Breeze,  or Ocean Surf.  I didn’t want to smell like a Clean Peak, a Phoenix, or an Axe.  I didn’t want to smell like Anarchy— which you’d think would be no deodorant at all— or an Arctic Refresh, whatever that is.  I didn’t want to smell like a Tropical Paradise or a Long-Lasting Mountain Spring.  And more than anything else, I didn’t want to smell Extreme, which would seem to defeat the point of deodorant entirely.

So I ventured over to the ladies’ section, home of floral and pastel packaging.  Women, it seems, have the good sense not to want to smell Extreme.  But the floral scents, it seems to me, were even more aggressive than Axe.  Sniffing the lilac antiperspirant was like being clouted in the head with a lilac-scented brickbat.

I couldn’t help but notice that, no matter the brand, whether it was Speed Stick or Right Guard or Axe or Dove, there was one row of antiperspirant completely empty.  I began to believe that this was the row where the unscented deodorants lived.  They were all sold out.  That’s what the people wanted.

Apparently nobody wants to smell like Black Ice or a Clean Peak.  They want the unscented, and that’s what they buy, and they leave the rest to stink on the shelf.

Why was the drugstore not giving people the option not to smell like anything in particular?  “Give the people what they want” would seem to be the essence of retail.  Do you suppose they’re given “vendor allowances,” which is what kickbacks are called now, to stock all those smells that nobody seems to want? All those scents are colonizing the shelf for their brand, even if nobody wants them.  Staking out “rack space.”  (It reminds me depressingly of book publishing.)

It took me visits to three different drugstores before I found a Speed Stick Unscented, and it was the last Speed Stick Unscented in that particular store.  Anyone coming after me was out of luck.

As consumers, we should stand by our right not to smell like much of anything!  Why should people stuff a Mountain Spring up their armpits when they don’t want to?

On, my friends!  To nothing-scented heaven!