On perfume and gender

News of a decline in perfume sales appears to have excited the feminist blogosphere. Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte suggests that "The bell tolls for #5", which, if they ever read feminist blogs, would cause conniptions in the Chanel publicity department, but only on the grounds that she hasn't referred to it correctly as "No. 5". She follows up a piece by Feministing's Miriam, which claims that the decline means "Women might actually want to smell like themselves!"

It's a pity and, I think, a mistake that these bloggers associate perfume with anti-feminism. Miriam alleges that perfume reinforces gender stereotypes: "Women need to smell like florals and fruit, while men need to smell like musk and pine trees." Meanwhile, Amanda opines that "The notion that women are inherently foul and need to be scrubbed and covered up with scent is an idea that’s fading." It's clear, then, that neither blogger knows much about the culture, industry or history of perfume, and that both are blinkered by their American-centric viewpoints.

Whatever one may think of its efforts, the United States of America has undoubtedly achieved greatness on a world stage. And yet I still can't name a single great American perfume, ever. The cliché suggests that American beauty is about dehumanisation and homogenisation, while Europeans are into individuality and earthiness, and unfortunately the cliché holds when talking about scent. Big American producers such as Clinique and Elizabeth Arden chuck out new ersatz fruity florals every year. A huge sector of the market is eaten up by gooey celebrity fragrances, notably those attributed to Gloria Vanderbilt and Elizabeth Taylor. Even the smaller and potentially more interesting houses - I'm thinking of Bond No 9 - tend to come out with nothing but fizz, froth and daiquiris. Even Bond's much-lauded Chinatown smells like something from The Body Shop pretending to be a fruit salad.

From an American perspective, then, perhaps perfume does seem like a way of covering up the "filthy" natural smell of women with flowers and fruit. However, step anywhere out of the United States - even to Canada or Mexico - and you'll quickly realise that the American attitude to perfume as anti-body is far from the norm. Perfume has since its invention been used by men, women and intersexuals alike, and the intention has almost always been to enhance one's natural smell rather than to erase it. Try any reputable old-skool cologne on a sweaty armpit, and you'll notice immediately that the point of the citrus/chypre is to blend with the human odour and bring out its natural spiciness, sweetness and sexiness. If you're American and can't bear not washing for five minutes, Jean-Claude Ellena's compelling Bigarrade Concentrée, from Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, recreates the effect with searing precision.

All the really great European perfumes are based upon challenging, unclean and often distinctly animalic notes. First and foremost, there's the holy trinity of civet, ambergris and musk (none of which can be accused of being clean or unnatural: they are, respectively, cat's bum pus, whale puke and deer spunk). Beyond those, there's the smoky sickliness of tobacco, incense, benzoin and cannabis, the spicy darkness of cinnamon, cumin and coffee, the sharpness of angelica and anise, the full-blown blowsy decadence of wilting jasmine - for both sexes. Think, for example, of Guerlain's Jicky. Marketed to men and women equally since its invention in 1889, it smells of burnt plasticine, tar, chlorine, fleshy bodies and baby sick.

Lest anyone forget, the great European perfumes are all built upon the fragrances of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, whence so many of their ingredients come. None of these places have perfume traditions based around deodorisation or femininity. The rosewaters, musks and vetivers sold in the spice markets of Mombasa or Mumbai are intended for use by any and all sexes, to add an individual edge to your existing smell.

Further does it sadden me that neither Amanda nor Miriam appears to be aware of the feminist history of perfume in the West. When women went out in 1937 wearing Schiaparelli's Shocking, they weren't attempting to efface themselves or scrub clean their dirty lady parts. Rather the opposite. The original Shocking was created, as Sir Ben Kingsley might put it, to smell like a cunt. (Don't bother with the reformulated version: this vagina dentata has been tragically defanged.)

Of course, if your knowledge of perfume starts and ends at Tommy Hilfiger, you're probably going to agree with Amanda and Miriam that the decline in perfume sales represents a feminist victory. I don't think it does, though I'm not lamenting it, either. As long as fewer people are buying the sinus-inflaming likes of Insolence, Angel and Paris Hilton Heiress, I shall be very happy. But the idea that perfume is inherently anti-feminist or anti-woman is an ill-informed slur. Perfume is no more anti-feminist than clothes: some styles are informed by a hatred and/or fetishisation of the female, but plenty are not.

If Amanda and Miriam want to throw out their perfume collections, that is up to them. Meanwhile, I'll be in the corner of the fairtrade café, reading Andrea Dworkin while sitting happily in a cloud of Tabac Blond - created in 1919 to celebrate women's agency and the potency of the suffrage movement. Vive la revolution!