10-08-19
Maybe we don't have to worry about global
warming or Iran or sun flares. Maybe we all will
be dead in 10 days anyway, if my sons keep it
up.
They just discovered Axe.
So forgive me if this column sounds as if it
was written in a fog. It was. It is. Gosh, will
this stuff ever dissipate? I work from home, and
it's as if my head got stuck in a cloud of
Brillo. My once sweet-smelling boys -- and, OK,
lately boy-smelling boys, ages 12 and 14 -- are
now industrial disinfectant-smelling boys. Any
and all of the other smells of the world --
Lilacs! Bacon! Broken toilets! -- have
disappeared. I miss them.
How clearly I remember the day about a decade
ago when my husband and I were walking around
town and noticed an odd billboard. It showed a
refrigerator full of whipped cream dispensers,
and the caption was something like this: "Thanks
to Axe, he'll have to get more in the morning."
My husband, bless his soul, thought it was an ad
for ice cream. I felt smutty for even
thinking what I was thinking. Which turns
out to be the entire Axe advertising strategy:
Give a wink and make us think that way.
(Which explains the brand's current ad campaign:
"Clean your balls.")
The Axe revolution had begun.
It was a revolution that many a military
strategist -- and mom -- figured never could be
won. It was the revolution that would take
ordinary boys, who never minded smelling like
insoles before, and turn them into
deodorant-loving, nay, deodorant-ADDICTED
fellows, pretty much by promising them instant studliness. Once a gal whiffed Axe, she would be
oblivious to everything else about the boy
wearing it. The endless Chuck Norris jokes. The
Pop-Tart crumbs around his mouth. The fact that
he's 12 and she's vice president for human
resources.
Using the "girls love the overpowering smell
of deodorant" approach, Axe became not only a
category leader but also a category creator. It
was like suddenly marketing eye shadow for dogs
or bras for birds; this thing that no one ever
had any need or desire for became suddenly de
rigueur. Forget the old rites of passage --
getting a paper route, having a bar mitzvah,
deleting a sext; mainlining Axe became the new
milestone.
Which would have been fine, if it just didn't
smell like Janitor In A Drum. Yes, that same
janitor who climbed in back around 1979, poor
guy. What's worse, the very gender it is
supposed to impress -- mine --turns out to have
big problems with it. A study conducted last
year at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in
Philadelphia exposed men and women to a sample
of male sweat, and both sexes detected it, no
problem.
Then the researchers (and whoever said
science is glamorous?) "masked" the sweat smell
with different deodorants. Men were fooled by
the deodorant 19 out of 32 times. Women were
fooled exactly twice. Said the lead researcher,
Charles Wysocki, "It is ... difficult to block
women's perception of sweat odors."
Bottom line? Females are left smelling sweat
AND the janitor stuck in the drum AND Pop-Tart
breath -- but only until the boys reach college.
Then comes the Old Spice Guy smell.
Counting the hours...
-----
Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Who's the
Blonde That Married What's-His-Name? The
Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything
You Know You Know -- But Can't Remember Right
Now" and "Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe,
Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with
Worry)." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com)
and read features by other Creators Syndicate
writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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