We love the smell of our first girlfriend’s perfume, no matter how cheap or tacky it might have been.
- When Books Could Change Your Life
Here’s a reason to go easy on the cologne: When the Nose Knows: How the Power of My Sniffer is Confirming My Pregnancy.
When I was pregnant I had a super sensitive sniffer and I used to joke that I could steal the job of an airport beagle. I was working in an office at the time, and I was able to tell which of my workmates had already made it into work simply by the co-mingling of their artificial scents which hung around the corridor leading into the main workspace. Otherwise pleasant smells became nauseating.
Response to perfume is very much a cultural thing, too. When I was an exchange student in Japan, I noticed that my host-family had a very low tolerance to any kind of artificial smell. I was into Body Shop products at the time, and decided to stop using them for their sake. It wasn’t just a family idiosyncrasy either — the longer I spent in Japan, the more I realised that artificial floral scents are genuinely unpleasant. Instead, the Japanese prefer clean, soapy, underwhelming smells.
Just in case you’re about to travel to Japan, you might choose to leave the floral perfume at home. It will definitely mark you out as a foreigner!
