Jennifer Horgan: And Just Like That... we lost the right to smell as we wish

Irish Examiner

2 days ago

Yes, I'm still watching the latest season of And Just Like That (AJLT), the Sex and the City spin off we probably never needed. Yes, it's awful, a step beyond 'so bad it's good,' and still, I persist. My loyalty was forged 30 years ago. Where those women lead, Carrie in particular, I will follow.
The strength of the original show was in its ability to spot the zeitgeist, hovering on the horizon, just before it landed. From highlighting the scourge of pornography to celebrating female desire, it pushed the cultural dial to wherever it was heading.
In the latest season, in one tiny respect at least, it's still doing it. It relates to one specific freedom – an individual's right to smell.
In Ireland, we take it for granted. We splash on perfume or aftershave with abandon, choose our own brand of deodorant, and wander out into the world in a happy cloud of fragrant disregard.
The new season of AJLT questions this scent-heavy culture. A recent episode sees Seema, a new character, a sort of Samantha substitute, in the arms of her new lover, a gardener named Adam. It's Lady Chatterley's Lover meets the Garden of Eden, set in a swanky, grossly consumerist New York.
Anyway, mid-coitus, Adam nuzzles Seema's armpit with his face. Out for dinner hours later, they see a woman unashamedly applying deodorant at her table. They laugh at her inappropriateness.
A shift happens when Adam explains that he doesn't use deodorant anymore, opting instead for rock crystals. Seema says: 'You should have told me about this crystal shit before we even got involved.'
Adam laughs but takes a moment to complain about the chemicals he has had to inhale to give her deodorised armpit a good seeing-to. Seema is taken aback – as are we, the show's predominantly middle-aged female viewers.
This is what Sex and the City was always good at – through its characters, viewers see the change they're not yet ready for. First, they took away Carrie's (our) right to smoke indoors. Now, they're coming for Seema's (our) perfume.
This attack on perfume isn't entirely new. A growing intolerance to scent is already well established in other parts of the world.
Logan Marshall Green as Adam and Sarita Choudhury as Seema in HBO Max's 'And Just Like That'. Their conversation about the use of deodorants signals growing intolerance to scent in other parts of the world.
My childhood friend is home with her family this summer from Canada. Her two-year-old noticed the cultural difference the minute they landed, her nose twitching; 'It smells here mummy".
Ireland smells like Canada doesn't. This is because in many public settings there it is simply not acceptable to wear perfumes or anything else with an obvious scent. To smell distinctly is to infringe upon another person's freedom.
Whilst there are no laws yet, policies are commonplace and Canadians abide by them. My friend, born and bred in Cork, saves her perfume for her visits home. She jokes that in Canada only French Québécois persist with it.
We are far from experiencing scent as an offence here. Body odour is frowned upon certainly but we still accept it, somebody's right to stink up the place if they so choose. We ignore the bad smells and lean into the nice ones.
And nothing is too much for us if it brings back memories. I walked past a new oud-based perfume shop in Cork the other day and was transported back to Abu Dhabi within seconds. My daughter, who was only six when we left, responded instantly.
This is all because of the brain's anatomy. Odours take a direct trip to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, regions related to emotion and memory. 'It's like Mushrif Mall,' my now 13-year-old daughter enthused.
Throughout the Middle East perfume is hugely, culturally significant. Men and women may be covered from head to foot in floor length robes, but they absolutely luxuriate in scent. Stepping into a lift in an Abu Dhabi mall was like finding yourself at the very centre of a bath bomb.
It was overwhelming – but not unpleasantly so. Scent is wrapped up in identity there, and a certain kind of 'under the covers' sensuality.
There is a dark side to our adoration of smellies, however. In a certain respect Seema's lover is right - many of the things we rub and spray on ourselves are toxic.
Australia's University of Melbourne conducted research on long-term exposure to fragranced consumer products. It found that 12% of people reported experiencing migraines and 7% reported experiencing asthma attacks after exposure to the likes of air fresheners and laundry products. Other studies suggest a link between common ingredients and infertility.
So, our own fragrances can hurt us, especially when we are getting them from all directions, even things like soap, clothes detergents, and air fresheners.
Then there's the impact on other people. Workplaces often ban things like peanut butter and seafood because anaphylactic reactions can be triggered by a smell across a room. When we breathe in fragrances, we breathe in particles small enough to cross the lining of our blood vessels and make their way into our bloodstream.
Reactions to different scents can go from surface level stuff like itchy/watery eyes, congestion, runny nose, throat irritation, coughing or wheezing to something deeper, especially for people with lung diseases like asthma or COPD. Such people can experience shortness of breath around our latest luxury concoction.
And this brings me to that word, "luxury". I still can't quite understand how shops get away with sticking the word luxury on a scented candle that is a collection of toxins in a glass jar. I am a full-on candle snob having learned to examine the small print closely, checking for lead in the wick, and to make certain the wax is natural.
A gift of a cheaply made scented candle is like sending a toxic bomb into someone's home, "luxury" or not.
And yet, all of that said, I'm not ready for us to go the way of Canada. I'm with Seema – an exceptionally long way from accepting rock crystals.
Scent-free sounds a little fun-free to me. I think I'd rather the wild west of smells you experience on a hot day in any Irish city. You know what I mean – the pencil-sharpener-scent of a sagging T-shirt, the Chanel-dripping waft of a designer dress.
Our smell is part of us; it's who we are – in all our difference and glory. Alas, if AJLT is right on this issue as Sex and the City was on so many others, mine is a voice from a future past.
Soon enough I'll be like the guy on a bar stool reminiscing about the years of smoking indoors, recalling the romance of a grey cloud suspended above us.
The happy middle ground is to be a little more aware of how many smellies we can handle on our bodies at any one time. And how much we're 'putting out there' when we enter a public space.
But I'm not ready to let my deodorant or my perfume go entirely. Just like I'm not ready to let Sex and The City go – whatever the critics say.