Perfume: an alluring mask of deceit

By Anonymous -


The incredible inequality of the sexes is revealed in this week’s reading of the Aroma of righteousness by Deborah Green. It is not only that women are not equal to men but that women are practically a different species. According to R. Joshua, the Bible states that Adam was created from the earth while Eve was created from the bone. Therefore, women slowly decay over time and must cover up their putrid smell by using different unguents (137). Throughout this chapter, Green gives instances in which women would purposefully adorn themselves or their garments with perfume. It was believed that the women used the smell of spice to keep their husbands interested for the forty years of wandering through the desert (136). It is as if the only reason to keep a woman around is to entice her husband to have sex with her and that she has no other purpose or used expect to take care of the resultant children.
Green also mentions several times how it was Eve who sinned and got Adam kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Thus it is the woman’s fault that man must suffer the trials of this world. It is the woman’s fault that man is corrupt and condemned to die.  So, the woman is expected to smell nice to cover up her decay and sin, yet when she wears the perfume she exudes nothing but sexuality (attraction, arousal, and exoticism) (136). It is as if she is being portrayed as trying to allure the man to sin, yet she would be criticized, and possibly unable to keep a husband, if she did not perfume herself.  It seems as if the Jewish woman could not escape the perception that she was either trying to cover up evil or lead others to a life of impurity. 
Interestingly the perfume adds of today do not seem to be portraying a different message. The
only reason to wear perfume is to make you smell absolutely irresistible to men. Perfume sells sex and vice versa.  Are women today set to the same standards?


Comments

  1. Jonathan Brumberg-KrausMarch 1, 2015 at 9:03 PM

    Good points, but be careful. Green herself is not necessarily advocating the rabbis' position that women need to perfume themselves to make themselves attractive mates for their husband; she's only presenting the rabbis' views. On the contrary, Green tends to point out the rabbis' gender biases.

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