Ascribing gender to perfumes is mostly due to assumptions or conclusions we imbibed through culture and our memories. It’s easier to think of scents we remember our loved ones wearing as something peculiar to their genders.
The perfume industry also follows convention by tagging floral and fruity scents as feminine while spicier and musky scents are labeled masculine. This generalisation that perfumes are inherently either masculine or feminine is similar to the idea that ‘boys like blue and girls like pink.’ Who started it? Where is the scientific evidence? How is it natural?
The truth is that humans are not programmed to be attracted to specific scents as a result of our gender at birth. The act of associating perfumes with genders is better ascribed to historical origins of perfume-wearing, cultural practices on use of perfumes and maybe our own neuroscience.
Originally, fragrance products from natural sources like plants were used in like fashion by both men and women. People used them as deodorants and supposedly to prevent diseases because some diseases were thought to be caused by bad smells.
The current perfume gender stereotype stems mostly from the western world. The 19th century Europe birthed a middle class due to the various social and economic changes that the era heralded. This upwardly mobile class had more money and time to spare for luxuries. This was unlike the time before the 19th century where men and women lived and worked together on small farms or family-run shops. In the 19th century, gender roles were more pronounced for the middle class as men did white-collar jobs in the cities while the women minded the homes and families. Women were expected to occupy themselves with feminine pursuits such as arranging flowers, playing music and fine arts.
Synthetic fragrance compounds were invented during that same period. This made the light and delicate scents associated with the social elites become available to the middle class too. That was how the status of feminine fragrances came about. And with over one hundred and fifty years of marketing, it was easy to attach genders to fragrances.
For some people, there is also a belief that perfumes should represent the wearers. So, when speaking of genders of perfumes, the standards or expectations of each gender should be embodied by the scent associated with that gender. For example, they see women as pretty and delicate. Thus, they expect feminine scents to be light, flowery and teasing. But they see men as hard and strong. So, they believe that masculine scents should be strong, deep and earthy.
Neuroscience can also make us identify certain scents with certain genders; this is because certain memories influence our reactions to scents. If your grandmother wore flowery and fruity scents, your aunts wear fruity scents and your mom also wore flowery scents; you begin to associate flowery and fruity scents with women. This is not a biological program but a social and cultural framework that shapes our expectations.
However, gender can influence the end result of a perfume after application. The fragrance compounds in perfumes react differently on different skins. A person’s diet, metabolism and pheromones will affect the person’s scent. This is where gender comes to play; there are scents more commonly produced by each gender. Women tend to have more acidic skin that men do, while men’s body odors tend to be musky and sharper. Hence, a scent could be transformed with its wearer.
Ultimately, what makes a fragrance either masculine or feminine is the wearer. In choosing a perfume, pay attention to all the notes and its reaction with your own unique scent. Have you ever tried unisex perfumes? Check out our carefully selected options
