When I was in the store sampling immortelle de corse, there was a (female) sales assistant, and I commented that I liked the iris note. She asked me "have you got "the nose"?" I told her that I didn't have a very good nose but iris was one note i could usually pick out and that I enjoyed. She then went on to educate me...
apparently "the nose" is something only men can have, women can't genetically have it, and you have to go to school for like three years and only one in one thousand people have it. I wondered aloud if she might be talking about "the nose" as in the perfumer, in which case women could certainly be perfumers and in fact the "nose" behind immortelle de corse was female. (I'm not big on remembereing perfumers but I read an article on her winning the competition etc.)
The SA said. no she didn't mean the perfumer. But whatever it was, it was definitely only pertaining to men, and that many women think they can do anything, but in fact there are many things that they are not able to do.
I reiterated to her I didn't think that was necessarily true and it wasn't the sort of thing she should probably say, but she started to get quite worked up, and told me that she had actually been to paris and had learnt that fact in a perfumery there.
I asked her to clarify exactly what this thing "the nose" was, because I read about perfume everyday and I'm concerned at her assertion that women's sense of smell is somehow genetically inferior and she re-iterated that she didn't know, but she was definitely sure that it was something only men could have and I could not convince her otherwise.
The whole thing kind of disturbed me... first, that she was accepting uncritically that there was something men had in their noses that women didn't have as incontrovertible truth, without evidence. ANd secondly, that she was using it as sales patter.
But it did get me thinking - I have never encountered this prejudice before. Has anyone else heard of such a thing? Where do you think she got it from? Is it just some sexist claptrap cooked up by some chauvinistic french ladies in a fancy perfumery? Or does it have some other basis?
As far as I know the exact mechanics of how we perceive smell is still not completely explained, so it would be impossible at this stage to quantify whether males or females have better olfactory skills, right?
apparently "the nose" is something only men can have, women can't genetically have it, and you have to go to school for like three years and only one in one thousand people have it. I wondered aloud if she might be talking about "the nose" as in the perfumer, in which case women could certainly be perfumers and in fact the "nose" behind immortelle de corse was female. (I'm not big on remembereing perfumers but I read an article on her winning the competition etc.)
The SA said. no she didn't mean the perfumer. But whatever it was, it was definitely only pertaining to men, and that many women think they can do anything, but in fact there are many things that they are not able to do.
I reiterated to her I didn't think that was necessarily true and it wasn't the sort of thing she should probably say, but she started to get quite worked up, and told me that she had actually been to paris and had learnt that fact in a perfumery there.
I asked her to clarify exactly what this thing "the nose" was, because I read about perfume everyday and I'm concerned at her assertion that women's sense of smell is somehow genetically inferior and she re-iterated that she didn't know, but she was definitely sure that it was something only men could have and I could not convince her otherwise.
The whole thing kind of disturbed me... first, that she was accepting uncritically that there was something men had in their noses that women didn't have as incontrovertible truth, without evidence. ANd secondly, that she was using it as sales patter.
But it did get me thinking - I have never encountered this prejudice before. Has anyone else heard of such a thing? Where do you think she got it from? Is it just some sexist claptrap cooked up by some chauvinistic french ladies in a fancy perfumery? Or does it have some other basis?
As far as I know the exact mechanics of how we perceive smell is still not completely explained, so it would be impossible at this stage to quantify whether males or females have better olfactory skills, right?
Anyway what happened to her perfumery studies in Paris? She flunked out?
Nope, read em, watched em at the movies, watched them at home, but imaging doing that to Ralph Fiennes! It shouldn't have been allowed.
