Original nonsense
Mar. 26th, 2006 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistI've been buying the same kind of deodorant for years now.
I noticed this today for a reason I'll get to in a minute, but first I wanted to say that this realization was dismaying. Brand loyalty for such a thing? Yet another evil multinational I'm supporting (although, of course, in the nature of evil multinationals, they probably already own everything else I buy anyway)? Hmph.
But then I thought I do it to save myself having to think.
I mean, in your average drugstore or supermarket, there are vast swathes of the stuff. Spray-on, roll-on, sticks of white chalk that always announce No White Residue! but always leave white residue anyway, sticks of clear chalk that announce Goes on Clear!, sticks of clear gooey gel (which I tried once but didn't like because it was always cold and putting cold things in my armpits every morning isn't my idea of fun) ... they're all supposed to do the same thing, and the list of ingredients is pretty much the same, including the aluminum that'll give you Alzheimer's. Who needs such a multitude of choices, just to keep you and your loved ones safe from B.O., especially when the ingredients on the back of all of them are suspiciously similar?
The only difference seems to be that this, like so much else in our culture, is segregated by gender. The women's are all pastel and proudly display their delicate scents and how good they are for your skin. The men's, on the other side of the supermarket aisle, seem much more interesting (but this might be because I look at them even less than I look at women's deodorant which, we've already established, is very little because I always get the same kind): black plastic, big letters in italicized fonts that look as if they're going to zoom right off the label and slide on to the next ... what?
You know, there aren't good words to use on the subject of deodorant, have you ever noticed that? Even when the back label includes directions for use, it refers to product and container, which just doesn't sound right for colloquial speech. But I can't think of anything that colloquial speech uses instead; both the abstract ideal and the concrete reality are just deodorant. Sometimes the latter can be a deodorant, which grates on my nerves, though I'm not sure if that's justifiable.
Anyway, the men's deodorant is cool-looking -- in fact I think Cool is used as a fragrance name, because men's deodorant is like that. It has names like Active and Turbo, much more fun than Powder Fresh or Shower Clean that we women get stuck with. I used to dislike this naming convention: what does "cool" or "sport" smell like? That's total nonsense. But then, my shower doesn't smell Shower Clean -- if you mean the place, it, hopefully doesn't smell like much of anything, and if you mean the process, well, at the end of it I smell like whatever fragrances have been articifially added to my shampoo and soap -- perhaps, ultimately, from the same evil multinational that brings me my deodorant.
Men's deodorant is cool-looking and high-tech. The newfangled stuff will be found here, the clear gels seem more predominant than on the other side of the aisle. And the gel will ooze out of the top in a patented pattern of squiggles or something, specific to that brand.
But the thing I like most about men's deodorants is that some of them advertise themselves as being so good they'll keep working even if you skip a day. An alien sociologist of the future could learn a lot by examining deodorant.
If I may be allowed to generalize even half as much as those labels do, I must say that I don't for a second believe that men are going to stand there comparing the Active scent with the Turbo one next to it. These things exist because women buy things like deodorant for the men in their lives. Not always, of course, and not all men have a woman to do it anyway (but this generalization goes on to say that those men would just blindly grab something because nobody needs this multitude of choices just to keep themselves and their loved ones safe from B.O., especially when the ingredients on the back of all of them are suspiciously similar), but still I know there are women who care more about the scents of their men than the men themselves do; cologne is a devious gift (as well as a boring one).
Speaking of scents, here's all I wanted to say when I started this entry: since I habitually buy the same kind of deodorant, I now find myself in possession of a British ... container of product (which I bought last time I was here and left it) and a USian one (which I had at home and brought with me because I had long forgot that I already had one here ... though even if I had remembered I probably still would've brought that one with me, because what's the use of leaving it 4000 miles away from my armpits?).
Since I'm not bothered much about deodorant fragrance -- I am not irritated by them, in either an olfactory or epidermal sense, but I do sort of appreciate their being there and it'd be a bit more effort to look for the containers of unscented product -- I get the Original Scent. (A name even more meaningless than those that evoke showers or turbosity! What's so original about it, eh?)
And (this is my point, coming up now) I think they smell different.
I haven't admitted it until now -- hardly even to myself -- because it seems silly. Why would an evil multinational corporation devise two different scents to have the same name (and surely Original Scent is, as the default, an important scent), merely because they are sold on opposite sides of the Atlantic?
And yet, now that I think about it, I'm sure I can tell which days I've applied the British product and which days I reach for the USian container. When I got back here and smelled my long-lost deodorant again, it conjured up associations of all the lovely times I'd put on deodorant last summer, thinking of the day's adventures ahead, exciting things like riding buses. And I wouldn't think that if it was the same thing I'd been wearing in all the intervening days, would I? The human brain has an amazing sensitivity to smells, and they're strongly linked to memory. My faith in that sort of fact I've read in at least one book is the basis for my conviction that there are two Orignial Scents.
Call me crazy if you will; I don't mind.
I like the USian one better. It's a bit less harsh. Or at least I feel like I smell less chemically fake and more like me (without noxious armpits, of course) when I use that one.
I've noticed in recent days that the USian one has disappeared. I thought it fell down behind the chest of drawers, but I looked yesterday and didn't see it there. And the British one is almost gone. It's still got some useful stuff -- I mean, product -- left in it but you can see the turquoise plastic underneath the white chalk that is guaranteed not to leave white residue, so its days are numbered.
Maybe it's a sign. Soon, I'll have the chance to buy a different kind of deodorant. I've had enough of the original nonsense.
I noticed this today for a reason I'll get to in a minute, but first I wanted to say that this realization was dismaying. Brand loyalty for such a thing? Yet another evil multinational I'm supporting (although, of course, in the nature of evil multinationals, they probably already own everything else I buy anyway)? Hmph.
But then I thought I do it to save myself having to think.
I mean, in your average drugstore or supermarket, there are vast swathes of the stuff. Spray-on, roll-on, sticks of white chalk that always announce No White Residue! but always leave white residue anyway, sticks of clear chalk that announce Goes on Clear!, sticks of clear gooey gel (which I tried once but didn't like because it was always cold and putting cold things in my armpits every morning isn't my idea of fun) ... they're all supposed to do the same thing, and the list of ingredients is pretty much the same, including the aluminum that'll give you Alzheimer's. Who needs such a multitude of choices, just to keep you and your loved ones safe from B.O., especially when the ingredients on the back of all of them are suspiciously similar?
The only difference seems to be that this, like so much else in our culture, is segregated by gender. The women's are all pastel and proudly display their delicate scents and how good they are for your skin. The men's, on the other side of the supermarket aisle, seem much more interesting (but this might be because I look at them even less than I look at women's deodorant which, we've already established, is very little because I always get the same kind): black plastic, big letters in italicized fonts that look as if they're going to zoom right off the label and slide on to the next ... what?
You know, there aren't good words to use on the subject of deodorant, have you ever noticed that? Even when the back label includes directions for use, it refers to product and container, which just doesn't sound right for colloquial speech. But I can't think of anything that colloquial speech uses instead; both the abstract ideal and the concrete reality are just deodorant. Sometimes the latter can be a deodorant, which grates on my nerves, though I'm not sure if that's justifiable.
Anyway, the men's deodorant is cool-looking -- in fact I think Cool is used as a fragrance name, because men's deodorant is like that. It has names like Active and Turbo, much more fun than Powder Fresh or Shower Clean that we women get stuck with. I used to dislike this naming convention: what does "cool" or "sport" smell like? That's total nonsense. But then, my shower doesn't smell Shower Clean -- if you mean the place, it, hopefully doesn't smell like much of anything, and if you mean the process, well, at the end of it I smell like whatever fragrances have been articifially added to my shampoo and soap -- perhaps, ultimately, from the same evil multinational that brings me my deodorant.
Men's deodorant is cool-looking and high-tech. The newfangled stuff will be found here, the clear gels seem more predominant than on the other side of the aisle. And the gel will ooze out of the top in a patented pattern of squiggles or something, specific to that brand.
But the thing I like most about men's deodorants is that some of them advertise themselves as being so good they'll keep working even if you skip a day. An alien sociologist of the future could learn a lot by examining deodorant.
If I may be allowed to generalize even half as much as those labels do, I must say that I don't for a second believe that men are going to stand there comparing the Active scent with the Turbo one next to it. These things exist because women buy things like deodorant for the men in their lives. Not always, of course, and not all men have a woman to do it anyway (but this generalization goes on to say that those men would just blindly grab something because nobody needs this multitude of choices just to keep themselves and their loved ones safe from B.O., especially when the ingredients on the back of all of them are suspiciously similar), but still I know there are women who care more about the scents of their men than the men themselves do; cologne is a devious gift (as well as a boring one).
Speaking of scents, here's all I wanted to say when I started this entry: since I habitually buy the same kind of deodorant, I now find myself in possession of a British ... container of product (which I bought last time I was here and left it) and a USian one (which I had at home and brought with me because I had long forgot that I already had one here ... though even if I had remembered I probably still would've brought that one with me, because what's the use of leaving it 4000 miles away from my armpits?).
Since I'm not bothered much about deodorant fragrance -- I am not irritated by them, in either an olfactory or epidermal sense, but I do sort of appreciate their being there and it'd be a bit more effort to look for the containers of unscented product -- I get the Original Scent. (A name even more meaningless than those that evoke showers or turbosity! What's so original about it, eh?)
And (this is my point, coming up now) I think they smell different.
I haven't admitted it until now -- hardly even to myself -- because it seems silly. Why would an evil multinational corporation devise two different scents to have the same name (and surely Original Scent is, as the default, an important scent), merely because they are sold on opposite sides of the Atlantic?
And yet, now that I think about it, I'm sure I can tell which days I've applied the British product and which days I reach for the USian container. When I got back here and smelled my long-lost deodorant again, it conjured up associations of all the lovely times I'd put on deodorant last summer, thinking of the day's adventures ahead, exciting things like riding buses. And I wouldn't think that if it was the same thing I'd been wearing in all the intervening days, would I? The human brain has an amazing sensitivity to smells, and they're strongly linked to memory. My faith in that sort of fact I've read in at least one book is the basis for my conviction that there are two Orignial Scents.
Call me crazy if you will; I don't mind.
I like the USian one better. It's a bit less harsh. Or at least I feel like I smell less chemically fake and more like me (without noxious armpits, of course) when I use that one.
I've noticed in recent days that the USian one has disappeared. I thought it fell down behind the chest of drawers, but I looked yesterday and didn't see it there. And the British one is almost gone. It's still got some useful stuff -- I mean, product -- left in it but you can see the turquoise plastic underneath the white chalk that is guaranteed not to leave white residue, so its days are numbered.
Maybe it's a sign. Soon, I'll have the chance to buy a different kind of deodorant. I've had enough of the original nonsense.