Just Because I Smell Good, Doesn't Mean You Can Eat Me

Green speaks on the scent of women throughout the Proverbs and the Songs, two scriptures that place an emphasis on the beautiful and erotic scents of women. Women's scents are characterized pleasantly; they are gardens, they are alluring, they are full of spice. Green equates the simultaneously sexual and sensual effect of women on men with the effect of the smell of food on hunger. 

This becomes a microcosm of how women and smell are connected in everyday life. Women are expected to smell pure- their perfumes and deodorants are advertised as "beautiful", descriptions of white linens and erotica are utilized, they are desirable. Men however, are "supposed to smell of sweat, whisky and tobacco"- when they are being marketed to, masculinizing terminology is employed resulting in the socialization of gender. The power roles and dynamics we have embedded into our lives are emphasized further through this- women are meant to serve men no matter how pleasant or powerful they might be. And men? They exist to consume what the woman has to offer- there is a clear hierarchy established.

As power is stripped from women in this way, they are also painted with negative connotations of attempting to claim control over men. They are declared evil, seductresses, and filled with intention to manipulate and deceive. 

Men are given the space to be considered "stinky" without paying any social consequence- the honesty and security in their stinkiness was of greater value than the women's beautiful scent. She is meant to lure men in and the men simply cannot hold themselves back. Their inability to control themselves against the smell of a woman is not registered as a fault of the man, but rather the evil intent of women. She must be doing it on purpose, right? Her existence must be viewed sexually, she must be there for the consumption of men, right? 

This approach to what our "natural" human response is to our "natural" human scent, begins to strip women of their autonomy. It becomes dehumanizing- Green illustrates this idea wonderfully through the earlier mentioned equation of the effect of women's scent on men to food on hunger. There is immense sexualization happening here that is symbolic of the entitled and hungry perspective that machismo and misogynistic culture employs against women consistently throughout history.