Growing Up Unscented

By Rashida Bartley

In my mom’s house perfumed items were outlawed. She said the fragrances bothered her. How the scented items agitated her I don’t know. She didn’t have allergies or at least she didn’t have allergies that were apparent to me. To this day, I still don’t I believe her explanation. In her closet she always had a secret stash of eau de toilettes from Estée Lauder and Lancôme.

It wasn’t so much that I wanted to smell fragrant- it was the denial of the right to smell good that upset me. Everything was unscented- hair products, laundry detergent, body soap, lotion, food. After age 13 I was allowed to wear nail polish. She openly wore nail polish so telling me the smell bothered her was not going to fly. I wanted to tell my mom the unscented stuff had the aroma of pureed plastic. I hated the unscented Lubriderm lotion my mom handed me whenever my legs were ashy. The plain white and blue bottle did nothing for my desire to be like the girls all the boys fawned over.

My high school friends experimented with building scents- teen musk layered on top of hormones, mixed with deodorant chunks, combine with stolen cologne and or perfume. I smelled like hard water and generic cooking grease. Guess I should have been grateful that I was clean and didn’t sport the huff of toe jam and Fritos.

When I shopped with my dad I’d buy perfumed items as long as it didn’t get him in trouble with my mom. He’d remind me that mom didn’t like scented items. And like me, he didn’t know why either.

I was missing out on my right of passage to smell like discovery. I knew mom’s odorless ways were wrong. In college I got my proof.  At random a college crush told me, “A woman should smell like something, she can’t just smell like air.”  He was the most profound 19 year-old I ever met.  Of course his interest in me was null and void just like my scent.

My first big cologne purchase was CK One by Calvin Klein.  At the time the unisex fragrance was ground breaking to my group of friends. A fragrance made for both men and women.  The only people I knew who wore it were girls. It was citrusy. Citrusy made me feel like a grown up. Plus the bottle was pretty big and the box set of lotion and cologne always seemed to be on sale.

My bathroom later housed any number of smell goods.  In my early years of fragrance freedom I wasted a lot of money on box sets. I never bought anything that claimed to smell like air. Most of my perfumes went bad from sitting on the shelf unused. These days my favorite smell good is the pearberry oil I found at the Jamaican shop.

When I visit my parents I still tone down the fragrances and my mom still has her secret stash of eau de toilettes.

© Rashida Bartley