Ok. Silliness aside, I have some serious points to make in this post.
A few weeks ago, I wrote extensively before about my political objections to snobbery in the beauty/luxury industries. The thoughtful discussion that that posting provoked made me realize that there is a deeply personal side to this experience for me, beyond the egg-head intellectual part (which is soooo much where I’d rather live, I’m well aware…) So, against my initial plan for this posting, I’m going to highjack this story with share-time, with the thought that it might put this whole perfume adventure into some context. I’ll do the actual reviews on Monday.
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I’ve been blessed all my life to be befriended by gorgeous women. (Why is another story I won’t tell now.) I mean, when you look through the eyes of love, anyone you care about is lovely. But I’m talking about objectively, in the standards of the broader culture, drop-dead, double-take beauties. I love looking at my friends—they’re so pretty!
Me—I was never that girl. I was always the Kate Jackson Angel—flat-chested, skinny, slightly-dykey-looking smart brunette—with glasses, no less. Before this turns into a Margret/Pauline discussion (Niko Case fans will know what I mean—Rita, too, is a fragment of a name…), in the spirit of full disclosure, due to a nice figure, I never played Velma to my stable of Daphnes, but, let’s just say, I knew where I stood.
So, feeling I could never compete with the true lovelies, I just never did the whole make-up/hair/pretty girl thing. I think glamour, if you don’t learn it early, you never really get good at it. I still don’t do it very well, but for the most part I don’t regret it. My husband loves my tomboy ways, and I’m getting to an age where I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks.
The only sad exception to my happy ignorance of all things girly was perfume: For years I wanted to smell all the pretty things. But I eyed perfume counters with the same trepidation that a newbie jump-roper feels when getting her first chance to double-dutch. I just didn’t know how to get started! I hadn’t developed any beauty counter skills, and unlike make-up, where I could reach out to an eye shadow shade that I liked and go “Aaah,” in the perfume department, there’s just no frame of reference for anything I might like or dislike. After all, a fancy bottle and/or a sexy ad campaign tell you absolutely nothing about the juice inside.
Unlike almost any other realm of my life, when it came time to sample perfume, I didn’t know how to say yes, I didn’t know how to say no. I certainly didn’t know how to articulate what I liked, and it feels bad to turn down polite suggestions!! Also, I feel keenly for the folks who work there—I don’t want to waste anyone’s time as I browse. But also I hate the feeling of being sold to to meet some sales quota.
I’ll put my discomfort another way: I didn’t feel entitled to be there. Not pretty enough, not rich enough, not feminine enough, not looks and class-conscious enough. I have viewed the first floor of every department store as a hostile, exclusionary environment and have been repelled by them for years.
Then I fell madly in love with perfume, spending hours and hours reading about it online. That helped ease my perfume counter phobia—some. Why? Because now I was informed. I was equipped with knowledge. I was “smart” enough to be there. (Oh, when we find something that works for us, we go back to that well again and again, don’t we? Let my big brain be my passport to the sniff counter. I am such a cliché!!)
The prospect of going to a super-high-end snoot palace to go sniff perfume was still enough to cause some low-level anxiety attacks for me. Much like suiting up to go into outer space to fight acid-dripping aliens (!!), I had to don my protective gear: fix my hair, put on make-up, wear what I think those who shop for the latest fashions might dress like. Mind you, I’m doing this by Braille, since I have no idea what fancy ladies dress like.
At this stage in my story, I might have the guts to dress up and go sniff, but I still had more in common with those trenchcoated creeps who troll though the dirty magazine racks and then scurry off without buying anything. I’m just not comfortable buying something unless I get the time to know it better. So even then, armed with a notepad and cute boots, I would still sniff and run.
So this is what I meant by feeling I’ve got to have someone to protect me when I enlisted my dear friend, Christina, to hit the perfume counters with me. Christina would be my Barney’s beard. (I can hear her laughing out loud at that description as I type that…) Gorgeous, sassy, smokin’ enough to turn the gay boys straight. (She’s got Julianne Moore’s bone structure with Sarah Palin’s coloring. I remember sitting with her one time at a restaurant in the Castro. Our waiter, near the end of the meal, came over to our table and said to her “I usually go for guys, but if you’re free, I’m available.” Yeah, she’s hot.)
Everyone loves Christina on sight, and I’ve never known a waiter, salesperson, bar tender, or cab driver who hasn’t wanted to…uh… flirt with her. To say the very least. So here is my idea: Christina will be my avenging department store angel. She will cover me with lots of lovely diversion bedazzling the sales staff while I sniff. And, she loves tuberose, that Olfacta Dentata of flowers. She will be my guide through some of the trickiest, scariest terrain out there for me.
To be continued....
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I’ve made the decision that I’m going to try to keep my postings shorter and sweeter—both to spare the eyeballs of my dear readers (those who slog all the way through these endless postings—Love you!! Bless you!!) and to pace myself in an attempt to maintain and sustain my creative energy in this project—not try to throw everything at every posting.
So next Monday, I’ll put up the tuberose reviews, and you will learn how my evil plan unfolded. Have a most wonderful weekend!!
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