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Under the Sun Cynthia Oi |
Buying nonsense of scents
while selling out sensibleTWO women stand before steamy mirrors in their bathrooms post-showers, ready to plug in their hair dryers. As the first woman moves her dryer toward the electrical outlet, her face crumples in dismay. Alas, her plug-in room deodorizer already occupies it.
Cut to the second woman. She smiles smugly because her plug-in room deodorizer has a coupling device that allows her to connect her dryer right through the deodorizing gadget.
I don't know how many people have the particular problem that the product addresses in this television commercial. I'd like to think not many, but I'm kidding myself. The company that makes and markets the contraption wouldn't have spent money on advertising if it hadn't already done tons of research and figured that out in the land of consumers of totally unnecessary things, there will be people who go out and buy the silly thing.
Still, it's disturbing to think that millions have had to confront the nettling situation where the electrical device they think they need to perfume the john gets in the way of using the electrical device they think they need to dry their hair. OK, maybe hair dryers are modern-day essentials. Heaven forbid that people should suffer bad-hair days 365 times a year.
You gotta love American know-how and inventiveness. Along with great advances in manufacturing and technology, we live in a nation where goods we could never have imagined before have become part of our daily existence.
Consider the probable evolution of that plug-in deodorizer. I suppose human aversion to stinky things is instinctive so that we avoid matter that can harm us, like disease-ridden remains or carcasses or waste that contains germs. On the other side, we're attracted to things that smell good, a primeval draw to flowers that eventually become fruit or foods we can eat. There's also just plain enjoyment of certain scents, like the suggestions of earth the air gives up right before rain.
So when a smelly bathroom repels us, our reaction is to mask the odor. A whole host of products have been developed that go far beyond those little piney, tree-shaped pieces of cardboard people used to hang from their rearview mirrors. Some of these come in sprays that allegedly disinfect at the same time. Others are waxy emulsions loosed from slits in plastic discs with stick-um on the back side so you can plaster them to any surface you so desire. There are candles and oils and potions containing concoctions, decoctions and extracts from the exotic, like Saharan moss (do they have moss in the desert?), to the homey, like vanilla.
If someone wants a wildflower-scented bathroom, that's fine. But a plug-in thingie that uses fossil-fuel-generated electricity to warm goop so it emits the scent of coconuts is a bit much. Even more ridiculous is the "problem" the thingie supposedly creates by blocking access to power when people go to plug in the hair dryer or the electric razor or the sonic toothbrush. The need for the plug-in with coupling device is contrived, but I'll bet the gadget sells well. Credit is due to the enterprising soul who dreamed up a product that regular cleaning and an airing of the room would take care of just as well, if not better.
Credit is also due to America's auto industry, which has created an equally fictitious need for urbanites to drive vehicular behemoths to and from the mall and the office.
Credit is due to the industry's marketing campaigns that tout them as safer when they account for an increase in tip-over accidents and for more serious injuries to people encased in regular cars in collisions.
Credit is due for promoting vehicles with such voracious appetites for gasoline that fuel economy in the nation has dropped to the lowest levels in more than two decades.
The American marketplace is a wonderful catalyst for improving the quality of our lives. It is also a swamp of irresponsible consumption. It's up to us to sniff out the yields of latter and do without their bouquet.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin since 1976.
She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.