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Female Fantasies? The Nose Knows!
Scented candles. What are they for? Ask a man, and you might get varying answers – for masking the stank of indifferent housekeeping; for turning one’s home into a firetrap (bonus if careless children and pets serve as the arsonists); for frittering away money; for making grown men sneeze. Like cushions, scented candles seem an item of home decor most men could do without. Indeed, 90% of candles are purchased by women. Yet candles grace seven out of ten households and come in more than 10,000 different scents for US customers alone.
As the autumn nights draw in, even earlier now that our clocks are set back, the clever advertisers at Glade invite you into the mind of their typical female consumer, so you can see what all the scented fuss is about. “LET TEMPTATION FILL THE AIR,” Glade’s ad proclaims, as a sultry alto invites you to “Dare to let fragrance take you places you never thought you’d go…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MocSwKG7gzA
The first place you never thought you’d go is apparently behind some dark curtains, where a handsome young buck – almost certainly younger than you, the consumer, are – approaches. He hands you an invitation. To a “glampfire”. “Enter If You DARE,” it reads. Glampfires are mad sexy and everyone knows it – his invitation couldn’t scream sex any harder if he’d stapled a condom to it.
You open the French (therefore sexy) doors to enter a Moorish bar with a French (therefore sexy) bartender. The tender gently strokes the length of the bar with a soft cloth. What elixirs does he display to tempt you with? Glade home fragrances, of course! After all, what could be more intoxicating?
Once suitably drunk on the power of home aroma modification, you meander deeper into the bowels of this Moorish palace, hand trailing languidly along an ivy-covered banister. Thanks to the power of Glade, the palace’s interior is overgrown in a riot of vegetation – entire pine trees, herbaceous borders popping out of jars. You turn your head and there, before a bower of autumn blossoms dark as sin, is The Moor himself. He takes you by the hand, teeth gleaming, into a nocturnal bower. He is there to help you discover yourself…
By, er… taking your picture, of course. After all, SC Johnson, purveyor of fine Glade products, is still a family company. (It has a wife company and little kid companies at home.)
Gazing at your own pale, sapphire-eyed image, you realize you are a femme fatale – as exotic as blue-eyed white girls get. Your narcissism thus sated, you draw near to an amber-colored candle. You are Alice in Wonderland, and the tiny orange peyote buttons tricked out like miniature magic pumpkins hold the key to your dreams – and beyond.
The courtyard door, grown impossibly small – dollhouse-like, opens. An almond-eyed Nubianess, grown towering by comparison, beckons. Her swaying steps will lead you to the place beyond your dreams.
What is this place?
A tea party, of course! The petits-fours are all pumpkin-spice flavored; the cups, impossibly dainty. Doll’s cups – all women are secretly children still longing to play tea with their dollies, dollies brought to life in exotic grownup form by the power of Glade’s “magic pumpkins”. The Nubianess’s downcast gaze suddenly lifts to meet your own, and you are transported once more – transported direct into Eden.
You pluck a magic apple (labeled just for you, O fairest) from the golden tree. Through the flaming, aurulent forest wafts flamenco music. Because why not? Don’t apples remind everyone of flamenco? A woman in a red dress appears in the distance. She is sinuous. She is exotic – a femme even more fatale than you are. She is Huma Abedin, and she is dancing just for you.
Now all afire with Glade-scented sapphism, you rush toward her, offering the apple. Once the fruit is within her orbit, the magic of her gaze teleports it directly into her own hand, and she takes a bite…
That is what awaits you with Glade’s invitation. Toldja glampfires were mad sexy. “Ignite your daring side,” the sultry alto croons. The dark curtains rustle. If the Moor, the Nubianess, and Huma weren’t enough for you, that young buck is still waiting in the wings…
So, intoxication and polymorphous perversity. That’s why scented candles are so popular – they’re nose porn for women. Or at least that’s what the good folks at Glade promise. And they would know, right?
“Feel tempted,” Glade suggests, suggestively. And for a microsecond, I am tempted – tempted to suppose Said was onto something with his critique of orientalism: though I’ve never thought ill of orientalists myself, the “exotic”, “oriental” tropes on display in this Glade ad are an intersectional deconstruction just waiting to happen. (Hello, Everyday Feminism!)
Now, perhaps you might still think a woman could be forgiven for believing that all scented candles are good for is making one’s home smell marginally nicer while adding a little ambiance by way of fire hazard. But women, if your scented candle doesn’t ignite your daring, dissipated, exotic side, you’re doing it wrong!
And men, the next time you see a woman in the scented candle aisle, cautiously sniffing the bounteous variety on offer, give her a little privacy…
Image Credit: Jeff Schear, Getty, from Glade’s Autumn Glampfire Event at the New Regal Theater
Published in Humor
Not me, but perhaps that is a question best answered by our resident flamenco expert, @mlh.
Oh, wow, M. is all about real flamenco–she might not take kindly to that fake stuff & then the canker’s in the rose.
Indeed, I am afraid to find out!
OMG, seriously? the ad department must have really sold this, haha
Fancy duds don’t mix with tools and grease. And say what you will about American dating, we’re still making more babies than you fancy guys.
Well, it ain’t the wrapping paper that makes the gift, but I read you. We like shorts and tennis shoes.
And for a tiny print ad in the back of a magazine. So tiny, I only had room for 35 words. And I nailed it!! Those words were perfect! The best bit of writing I’ve ever done.
Legal now in California! If it fails to sell scented candles, they could try to repurpose this ad and pitch it to the nascent pot industry…
As a perennial hayfever sufferer, I’m practically smell-blind.
FIFY
True, I suspect Californians like their neti pots, too.
Too funny
Truly the director’s magnum opus, I haven’t had such a visceral cinematic experience since https://youtu.be/-cOx2PMnxTY
Unfortunately, the commentary was witty and entertaining.
This was great… Between you and Titus, a real entertaining read.
However, now I must go researching aroma-therapy for relaxation and purchase some candles for some long reading evenings of good books.
I do like candles, but only one need be scented. And only one type of scent. No cacophony of smells needed.
I like scented candles!
For anyone wondering what exactly the Glade commercial intended to advertise, the Moor was for “Wondrous Autumn Nights”, the Nubianess for “Rich Pumpkin Dream”, and Huma for “Spiced Apple Magic” – the scents themselves described as follows:
It’s not just a patchouli-based home fragrance moderately reminiscent of men’s cologne – it’s an autumn mantra!
Now, you can’t heighten much more than your tastebuds unless your tastebuds are also heightened, suggesting that the proper thing to do is to eat the candle – after all, you’re taking a chance with every morsel!
Because nothing – nothing – is more unexpected than an apple-spice scented candle in fall or winter: proof that you’re always primed to try something new.
Hojeez, I hope @kelsurprise, @vicrylcontessa, @elephasamericanus, @goldwaterwoman, and @rightangles all get a load of these “tasting notes”. They are hilarious!
I know! I mean, around here it’s nothing but toasted walnut from Labor Day until Columbus Day, and then pumpkin spice right through Thanksgiving. That’s what makes the apple scent so surprising! Apples? In Autumn? Next you’ll be telling me to try pine-scented candles around Midwinter!
My daughter managed to set her hair on fire with one of those candles. She was leaning over the kitchen counter playing with a new Christmas gift when she ignited. The gift … a Kindle Fire. And that’s why I think Amazon.com is haunted (and why we both banned my wife from lighting those dang candles for a few months).
That’s my man!
My mom the candle fanatic set her dining room table on fire once.
Oh, it’s that women in America are really not satisfied with the sloppiness…
Better than Germany, worse than France, or no better. & how about them colleges!
I pictured Huma sensuously dancing for me and threw up a little. Thanks Midge.
We’re edgy. Hell, we even have tools called edgers. How much cooler can you get? Or is “cool” not edgy enough?
Isn’t this always the truth? Those bastards!
Now who’s all about the sizzle and not the steak?
I think edgy isn’t cool enough.
After 45 years of marriage , even a dense knuckle dragging male figured this one out. Nose porn…now that is funny.
Well put-
Sheesh Titus, you are right . I recall the only way I could win in sartorial comparison was when my accessory was a Gulfstream. I recommend it highly with a very well tailored suit with braces and French cuffs.