Venusian Pleasure
Cat Zhang’s article on perfume culture in The Cut last week annoyed me. It was very cynical. After a deep dive into the niche perfume world to research the article, Zhang came away with one depressing conclusion: “our society is deeply unwell." Specifically, she argues that perfume has gone from a personal indulgence to a consumerist obsession driven by social media and endless new releases. She claims fragrance has lost its social function—no longer something you wear to interact with the world, but a private fixation. She ties this to what’s been called “the anti-social century,” where sensory pleasure is increasingly something to experience alone. She ends by suggesting gourmand perfumes are replacing food as drugs like Ozempic suppress appetite.
As a wildly obsessive, mildly eating-disordered, and vaguely antisocial perfume addict, I felt a bit attacked. Does my perfume appreciation occasionally morph into a feverish hunger to buy, buy, buy? Yes. Do I mostly wear perfume for myself and myself alone? Absolutely. Have I pondered whether I’m simply drawn to perfume as a calorie-free indulgence? Also yup. Have I also pondered whether collecting decants and creating literal spreadsheets about them is a symptom of my OCD? Yes! All these things are true. But I also think Cat Zhang is wrong.
Sure, there are ways to look at current perfume consumption trends and be depressed about them. You can read almost anything as depressing if you want to. But I read the current perfume landscape and my own perfume habits as a source of bliss in an often bleak world. The day after I read (skimmed) Cat Zhang’s article, I was on my daily walk listening to my favorite perfume podcast, Perfume Room. There are tons of fragrance podcasts, and I’ve listened to almost all of them. But this one is my favorite because the host, Emma Vernon, is enthusiastic and unpretentious and, put simply, seems happy. She sincerely adores perfume and approaches the subject with a gleeful curiosity that makes the pod a bright spot in my day. The day after I read (skimmed) Zhang’s downer-y article, I listened to a Perfume Room episode featuring a perfume influencer I follow on TikTok, Perfumerism (funnily enough, her name is also Emma). And I like her for the same reason I like Emma Vernon—she comes off as happy, curious, and incredibly passionate. Her YouTube bio reads: “my name is emma and i am a lover of all things beauty❤️.” Girl, same.
The Emma x Emma Perfume Room episode was such a delight to listen to—just two upbeat Emmas sharing their fragrance fandom without being gatekeepy or snobby or elitist. Perfumerism (which I’ll call her to avoid double Emma confusion) said she wants to smell like she’s “wrapped in a cozy blanket listening to Folklore” (so pure!). She shared stories of working in a perfume store and how rewarding it was to help people discover perfumes that moved them, recalling how one scent even made a customer cry. She said her first niche perfume love was Delina because wearing it felt like watching a movie, the way the scent morphed into something completely new every hour. She explained that humans can smell thousands of scent molecules, but we often don’t realize it because we lack the words to articulate them. So the more we expand our scent vocabulary, the more we can actually smell. I found this fascinating as a lover of words and occasional fan of neuroscience. As it turns out, my perfume obsession—the reading, the research, the documents—is literally expanding my ability to smell!
Listening to the Emmas talk with such exuberant expertise reminded me why I love fragrance—not as a mindless consumerist reflex, but as something that makes life more textured. Is it an indulgence? Most def. But let’s consider my past vices: daily weed smoking, binge drinking, chain smoking, popping Adderall (while binge drinking and chain-smoking). I’ve also had toxic flings with gummy bears, Domino’s cheesy bread, and women who hate me. I think it’s safe to say that perfume is the most innocent habit in the bunch. But it also feels like it’s in a different category. The other vices dulled my senses. Perfume sharpens them. It enriches.
To counter Zhang’s argument that perfume habits reflect trends toward antisocial behavior, my perfume habit actually gets me out of the house and talking to people (not my natural instinct). Most Saturdays, I’m at niche perfume stores, nerding out with the people who work there. I love the boys at Scent Room on Larchmont in particular. And after publishing a book with “perfume” in the title, I gained a whole network of fragrance-heads on Instagram, many of whom have become actual friends. I genuinely love chatting with them and gushing over our latest discoveries. When I offered fragrance fittings over the holidays, it was super gratifying to pair people with scents they fell in love with. For me, perfume has been the opposite of isolating—it’s been a way to connect, share, and even bring people joy.
Perfume reminds me of my love of music; in both cases, I’m a voracious consumer but not a creator. With reading, I’m pickier, probably because writing is what I do. But the idea of making music is obscure to me, as is making perfume that smells both pleasant and original (I’ve tried and mine was neither). Writing about music and perfume is also something I find challenging, which doesn’t stop me from trying constantly. My experience of both is very visceral, intangible, magic. I am the biggest fan of anyone who can write about music or perfume in a way that captures the very phantasmic experience of enjoying it. My aforementioned perfume friend Lucy writes the most stunning perfume reviews. Allow me to include a few of her Fragrantica musings.
I mean… poetry! There are just so many depressing things in the world right now and always (spoiler: we all die), and I find it necessary to engage in Venusian pleasures in order to survive. So, Cat Zhang, let us have perfume. It’s not fentanyl, it’s fragrance. Let us live!
I'm curious to know what the asterisks mean in your personal list. The ones you already have?