smell good for Him!

By -

 Deborah Green's “The Aroma of Righteousness” addresses the erotic and appealing nature of scents in the context of rabbinic texts in a very eye opening way and I was quite drawn to her statements on women and smell. It was and still is common practice for women to use perfumes in order to have an appealing smell to them, even a bit expected of them. The consequences of patriarchal societies are seen in all kinds of historical texts and in Greene writings you can really see the impact that this has on women and how they are depicted and seen in a religious context.

Women are expected to smell good, though when that smell is recognized and thought to have a seductive pull, those women are now viewed as erotic temptations that test and wickedly trick mankind. It was surprising to see how such suggestive texts can be seen in religious contexts, but the ways that these are often used against women was not as shocking to me. This can be seen in current society just through beauty products aimed towards women. I remember one Christmas I opened my stocking to find a perfume bottle with the name “man-eater” plastered on the front. I looked at my mom amused and laughed at how ridiculous this name was. What does “man-eater” even smell like? And why was my mom buying it for 13 year old me? Walking through any perfume aisle it seems that most of the names don't even have to do with the scent, they just push some ridiculous (normally sexist) image onto the product. Why is it that the scent of a woman has to be seen as inherently sexual and seductive? In modern day, the sexual power women can have is often seen as empowering, which can explain the dramatic naming of so many beauty products, but why must that be one of the main ways that women are represented as powerful in media and advertisement? How can the perfume you decide to put on one morning alter the way you're depicted by society?

https://itsblossom.com/blog/2019/08/16/sexist-vintage-makeup-ads/


Comments

  1. Jonathan Brumberg-KrausApril 19, 2022 at 7:48 AM

    "How can the perfume you decide to put on one morning alter the way you're depicted by society?" Great question! How would you answer it? I suppose while it may be nice to have power, when female power is so narrowly defined and thus restricted to sexual/erotic power in patriarchal culture, it's definitely a mixed blessing. Real power would would be less pigeonholed by others' definition of it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sarah McGrailMay 12, 2022 at 10:57 AM

    It's very odd to me how America can boast being one of the freest countries in the world for women and yet still basically only be viewed through the male gaze

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The most primitive sense

By -
Image
Smell the Flowers by Kirsten Star Smell, to me, is the most primitive sense. When most mammals are born, they immediately can recognize their mother’s smell and form an attachment to that smell. Mammals like puppies are almost entirely limited to only the sense of smell until they develop more of their other senses. The sense of smell also becomes the most primitive when considering humans and the phenomenon of perfume. For years, humans hunted certain animals for the purpose of obtaining the musk produced in the anal gland. This musk in small doses can act as an aphrodisiac when put into a perfume even though it has incredibly primitive origins. Though most of Western culture has an aversion to smells considered gross or undesirable, the wealthiest of women are still willing to pay heavy prices to spray a smell once obtained from the anal glands of other animals. The sense of smell is not something that humans can control and adjust but rather it is only changed by evolution over
Read more

Cannibalism and Symbolism

By -
Symbolism plays an important role in religious ceremonies because people cannot have the divine being where they want him all the time. So they start creating ways to be in touch with God. Such as in Christianity, eating bread is symbolized to be eating God-made flesh. There are similar rituals in Judaism where they eat the food of God. A big difference between taste and the other senses is that the object that is being sensed is internalized, whereas all the other senses use an external sensation. Taste cannot extend anywhere like the other senses can. This allows the humans to have no barrier between the divine (symbolized as food) and themselves. This is the closest they can get to God, but internalizing Him.  This thought of getting the closest they can to someone by ingesting and gaining power from it led my mind to wander to the thought of serial killers that also happen to be cannibals. I know that it might be a stretch, but there are some similarities. I als
Read more

Wrap-Up Post

By -
Image
Alright, let’s tie this up in a nice little bow. I genuinely did not know what to expect coming into this class. The extent of my knowledge of the senses comes from elementary school when we had to make it a little song to get the information through our tiny heads. Beyond that, everything seemed pretty cut and dry. We have five senses. We need to use all of them to survive. It’s as simple as that. I did not know how there was enough to talk about the senses to fill an entire college course, especially one specifically regarding the relationship between the senses and religion. But the fact that we were barely able to fit all the content in before the semester ended proves just how wrong I was. Let’s talk about why that is and what some of the things I learned were. First off, even the most basic assumption about the senses, that there are five of them, was questioned immediately. The sixth sense may not have been as clearly defined as the other senses, but there was certainly a lot to
Read more