Yankee Candle, Lighting Gender Norms and Assaulting Peoples Noses

 

    I have only gone into a Yankee Candle three times in my twenty years of life. It's always an overwhelming experience because of just how many smells are just wafting into your nose all at once. For someone who is sensory sensitive it's always a lot.  The aggressive smells of florals and, depending on the season, pumpkin or gingerbread. Its everywhere and its most popular during Christmas when people wanting their house to smell like spices and whimsy. But when I went for the third time last week I noticed something the colors of the candles usually are associated with the picture or the person it's marketed to. For instance all the candles that are very focused on being marketed towards women, with scents involving flowers or beaches with pastel coloring. In a traditional sense its clear they were directed towards women, and I hate to give into gender norms but I did enjoy the smell of a few of the candles. But while there I noticed something none of the candles were non feminine. The only ones I could find were wood or cedar with dulled colors of green or purple depending on the row I was looking at. This made me think of the conversation we were having in class about marketing and how it involves gender norms when it comes to scents. So out of my own interest I went onto their website thinking maybe more manly scents would be. But no all the categories I believed would have more masculine scents were still slightly marketed towards women, woody scents had witches or cute campfires on the label. From what I could tell the idea of wanting the house to smell pretty seemed to be marketed as a feminine thing, which shouldn't be the case. Despite stereotypes I believe men also sometimes may want their house to smell not like a pit of doom and laundry. But why not try to make more money by marketing towards men? So out of pour curiosity I googled "manly yankee candle" and my personal favorite example was the following 

"Shark Lightning for Men" now I know this is joke but part of the joke is the fact most masculine scents actually don't look like this sadly. They tend to not use images or cute pictures because its too feminine. Most of the ones I found were fully one color with the name of the scent and thats it. The manly scents have an extreme lack of whimsy or creativity. And in the Smells chapter of the natural history of the senses they do talk about smell or scents in a very gendered way. With women liking florals, fruity and citrus and men liking foresty, wooden, or metal scents. But one thing that the chapter quickly mentions is the fact roses were a universally loved scent which is a floral. So is the modern day so concerned with gender norms that they refuse to allow floral scents to be marketed towards men. To further my investigation I went to the Bath and Bodyworks website just to compare what scents they have for men.

 And I found more options for men at least in the candle section but it is clearly marketed towards men but isn't actually a scent. 
The two photo's below are real candles that seem to be focused towards men. It introduces a new scent to the category of manly smells is alcohol. Now I get a lot of scents there when I go, I adored their Disney collection with villain themed scents. But the more I think about it all the scents I enjoy or like the smell of are marketed towards women. There is no sports themed marketing campaign, it seems like smelling nice is only a feminine thing and that men shouldn't want to spend money on smelling nice. So now when I go look for my Japanese Cherry Blossom shampoo, I'm going to keep an eye out for what scents are "for men" and give it a sniff to see if theres something about it I don't like or if I will enjoy the scent.