The names keep getting wackier, and JJ Vincent wonders who this stuff is supposed to attract, anyway.
Dear Clever People Who Want to Make Men Stink Better:
I understand that it’s a smelly, smelly world out there. Between car exhaust and fast food grease and forgotten bagels and gym socks and last month’s milk, it gets funky. Plus with everyone so busy running from place to place…well, not literally, because who runs anywhere…we the people can get a little bit odiferous ourselves.
Last time I checked, people want to be in places that smell fresh and clean, and around people that smell fresh and clean, with a pass given to those who can’t be or just finished doing something sweaty-making.
So why, WHY, are you trying to get me to buy things that will make me smell like Wolfthorn, or Danger Zone, or After Hours, or Swagger, or Foxcrest. Or Gold Temptation. Or Snake Peel. I’ve made plenty of walks of shame, thank you, and I’d prefer not to add another with one of these. But according to you, to be a real man, to make my woman, or any woman, really want me, and not go off into the sunset with a handsome man on a horse, I need to smell like whatever Snake Peel smells like. Real masculinity, according to you, exists via my mansmell, because I don’t have much else to offer:
Turn up your mansmell. Let’s admit it men, we don’t have a lot of tricks up our collective sleeves. Sure, ladyfolk make their skin all sparkly and their hair asymmetrical, but the best we can do is choose a button-up or a sweater. That’s why it’s important to smell great.
[Product] scent technology enhances handsomeness and commands female attention all day without having to reapply.Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
Really? Last time I checked, “Insulting Your Way to Higher Profits” was not part of Marketing 101. See also Bearglove:
Can you imagine a powerful, fearsome grizzly bear who can repair military helicopters and also speak confidently about important world affairs? If not, you may not be ready for this body wash.
SO. Let’s talk about alternatives.
This clip is circulating about the gendering of packaging of products, and how we are being tricked into buying guy this and girl that. Y’all are taking pages out of the LEGO production playbook now?
I love something a little bit fruity, some citrus maybe. Cucumber is good. Clean. Flowers and powders not so much. Shampoo that smells like candy, yes please. Out of bed and into a sugar rush? I’ll take that over something that smells vaguely of High School Locker Room any day.
But what, I ask, with the pastels and flowers and tropically eye-searing colors and smooth-and-shapely bottled that are hard enough to control in a store, much less when you are half-asleep and half-blind (can you tone down the orange)? I know plenty of women who loathe all things pink and sweet and frothy (how about some black and silver and spicy for them), and plenty of berry-banana-smoothie-soap loving men who would rather not have a glamour bottle of it in their bathroom.
And don’t suggest, as one idiot friend of mine did, to “buy some real stuff, dump it out, and put that girly shit in it.” You cannot get the smell of pine and musk out of plastic.
I know we are supposed to be in an enlightened time when men can wash and groom themselves with whatever they please. But that doesn’t mean they want to be seen buying it or having it in their bed or bathroom (single guys? back me up on this?). Their friends will likely laugh at best, never let them live it down at worst (while surreptitiously sneaking in for a sniff). Ok, fine, real friends wouldn’t do that, blah blah blah. Whatever. Guys hassle each other. They heckle each other. The tease each other for the ManStink body spray and the blueberry face scrub. How many acted out the Old Spice Man for how long? Cute, yes, but reinforcing a specific kind of maniliness that you, dear maker of bottles of Dear God What’s That Smell, are just sliding along on. Yes, plenty of guys love this stuff. They are no longer shackled to two choices of bar soaps or their mother’s pink stuff. Good for them. Now how about the rest of us?
We have two choices. Buy the smell you say we should, in the extreme Manly packaging, or tote our twice-the-price for half-the-ounces bottles of Beach Linen body wash that we love, but looks like it just jumped out of Cosmo. Not all of us want the Cosmo look.
Can you meet us in the middle? Lose the flowers, lose the daintysquiggles and pastel-neon nightmares, lose the cleansers that rely on outdoorsy/creature of the night smells that attract absolutely no one (but cling to you like cigarette smoke), and give us something that cleans us well, stinks nice, and doesn’t make us wonder if we’re on Candid Sexy Man-cam…and about to get punk’d?
And besides, isn’t everyone supposed to swoon over sugar cookies?
Signed,
The Guy Who Doesn’t Want to Smell Like Bearglove and Swagger
PS I’m also bi, so what the hell am I supposed to wear when I want to attract me a gent? Please advise.
Photo: theimpulsivebuy/Flickr
I see I’m late to the party, but here I am. I get where you’re coming from not wanting to smell like piney woods or tiger scrotum & would like additional options. There is another side to the unicorn fart, if you will. Speaking as a woman, I would much rather my guy smell like a guy & not a cucumber or fresh linen (and heavens, no, not cheese doodles or unicorn farts). I’m sure there are plenty of women who wouldn’t care in this gender-fluid -perfume world of products that are now available, but by-and-large, I think Old Spice… Read more »
Dude, you live in the land of the free and the home of the brave – and also the home of International Flavors and Fragrances that makes the scents for every perfume, cologne and shampoo house in the free world, more or less. And you’ve got access to the intertubes, and the amazing Google machine. Just like you can get any color and type of yarn you want for your knitting, you can get any scent you want for your body. You want to smell like bubblegum and cheese doodles – there’s a perfume or two out there with your… Read more »
Randy, I think you’ve just found the name for my as-yet-unwritten memoir, or unformed band: Bubble Gum and Cheese Doodles. I’d like to ask…do you think that if boys were introduced (and I mean as a large group, not just a few here and there) to, say, clean/neutral scents as opposed to musky/woodsy scents when they are young, would that carry into adulthood? Do you think the general preference for “men’s scents” is innate or taught? Just looking for opinions. Having not raised a child and not seeing this discussed – we talk a lot about toys and clothes but… Read more »
I think it also depends, in large part, on what guys are willing to put up with. Some don’t care what their friends think (about many things). I think many more claim not to, but their actions don’t bear that out as they work to conform to peer standards or, at the very least hide evidence of their non-conformity.
We will not always like the package. But that really should be the last of your problems or not a problem at all. “Can you meet us in the middle?” Many products, gendered ones, are not that extreme anyway. And even if we lose the flowers and glitter and the bold orange letters and pine stuff of the most “extreme” stuff, we will still see packages we dislike. Believe me, I see your point. I usually see the male oriented products and commercials and laugh. Laugh at some of the commercials to products to women as well, but usually the… Read more »