Photo taken by me
She was mindlessly scrolling through her social media, looking for a video that would change her life. A video suggestion appeared on her YouTube list.
"Top 10 perfumes to get you mega compliments"
Her eyes lit up, and she clicked on the clickbait, which made the underpaid digital marketer give a smug smile behind their screen. One more sucker.
A guy comes on the screen, does a spin, and shows off his bare, hairless chest. He puckers his lips and starts tossing hundred dollar perfume bottles like they are $1 candy.
So, he was legit.
She went through the scent profiles of these perfumes:
**Lemon, Bergamot **(what's that?) No, she did not want to smell like a kitchen cleaner. She already smelled like it.
Patchouli, earth, oakmoss—no, she did not want to smell like her five-year-old grimy self after an hour in the playground.
Ginger, cardamom, pepper, and coconut—so, essentially, they had captured the notes from her mom's kitchen. She used to smell like that.
Blackcurrant, iris, and vanilla—no, she didn't understand why anyone would want to smell like a headache-inducing, fruity, edible lipstick.
Rose, aldehydes: Imagine your elderly grandma and the detergent she uses to wash her clothes. Now if you want to give wafts of vintage soap from your person, spray one of the most iconic fragrances ever.
Truffle, chocolate, incense, and tobacco: Does she want to smell like a 1920s dessert bar for men? Hell yeah. Does she want her mother to kill her for allegedly smoking? Hell no.
Osmanthus?, Musk?, Amber?, Vetiver? - Go around smelling like a shrub that exudes sap and where an animal used to live? Pass.
Vanilla, cotton candy—this is how some people get diabetes. A person skips around smelling like a dessert, and the next thing you know, you have bought six donuts and are sitting on a park bench covered in powdered sugar.
Star Anise, Ivy, and Licorice: In India, we have a digestive dessert called a paan. She associated it with her unemployed uncle, who was always itchy. The paan has elements from the star anise and licorice families, so this perfume smelled like her family.
Rose, almond, orange blossom and cashmere wood—smell like a fruity yet sophisticated young lady from the mystic east? Yes please.
And this delightful concoction in a beautiful flacon shaped like a heel (do not call it a bottle) goes for a cool $100. She thought about it for days and nights, until all she could smell anywhere was cheap rose perfume. The world was crying out for that expensive flacon.
But she got a compliment. Her colleague had just stepped into the lift with her. She had sniffed and asked, "What smells beautiful?" She had done a mental hi-five with her $100 bottle and confidently said it was her new perfume. The colleague had gushed about how amazing it was. She had ended the compliment by saying how hard it was to find cherry perfumes. It was on the cherry-flavoured hand sanitizer that she had just used. The sanitizer was $2.
Facepalm.
