Perfumes for Grandes Dames

I’ve been wanting to do a post on my so-conceived ‘parfums des grandes dames’ for a little while now and then I saw this review of Une Fleur de Cassie on Now Smell This and I figured it was time.  Time to create a moment.  The urge may have originally been born out of this post on Perfume Posse, which is frankly from more than a month ago, but it needed time to marinate.

So thinking about fragrances for adult women.  And obviously take this with a grain of salt, given that I’m only recently legally able to drink.    I don’t much think about my preferred fragrances in terms of ages or ‘maturity levels’ so much as feelings and smells that appeal to me. But if I were consciously thinking about it, and what makes a perfume ‘womanly’, well, there are definitely things to be said.

The vast majority of mainstream fragrance releases these days seem to be fruity florals or tooth-achingly sweet gourmands, and those are both genres that I can enjoy, but this obsession with the innocent and saccharine is a bit worrisome.  Perfumes shouldn’t need to be clean or barely there.  And women shouldn’t need to be quiet or youthful to be ‘tolerated’.

In the simplest terms, there is a lot more to the archetypal ‘woman’ than the part of her that is a ‘girl’.  Being a woman is about ambition, power, sex, beauty, motherhood, exploration, and so many more things.
And in that way that people have, that idea also has a scent, in my mind. Or a type of scent with a lot of variation. Because there are many types of women.

The common denominator: All are full, luscious, and complicated.  All of them are somewhat ‘tricky’. They’re dignified even to the point of being standoffish. They’re proud. Just like you should be! 🙂

Literature: Family Secrets and Strange Happenings

 

I avoid posting short lists but these fit together in a way that intrigues and excites me, so I refuse to change it! It’s my blog.  As you may know (or not) I’m in my senior spring semester at university right now, which means I have pretty much the most carefree schedule I’ve known since preschool when we had scheduled nap time.
Only one of my classes is a necessity for my major and all the rest I’m taking just for funsies.
One of these classes is a super-basic English class called Female Sociopath, and it helps that I’ve read essentially all of the required reading already (except one, which is where this list comes in). That class basically tackles one of my favorite character types which I’ve been referring to in my head for years as ‘women who inspire me to be the devil incarnate.’ So it’s an excellent fit and, having given this scary female trope a disturbing amount of thought already, the class is very much a breeze.
But there was still that one book that I hadn’t read yet, and because it’s been my universal experience that reading a book for class absolutely ruins the experience, I made sure to read it about a week in advance.  That book was Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and I’m so glad I took the precaution, because it’s such an amazing and I’m proud to have rescued it from the insidious and pervasive interference of academics.

Four Courses

Many apologies because I have something like zero time today (AGGGHHHH) and am feeling a bit frenzied- can you tell? It’s just a lot of dance practice and posts that I want to write but want to put a lot of time into, which I can’t just this minute.

But I know! Sundance Film Festival is happening and there are a lot of movies to look forward to in 2017! The Oscar nominations just dropped this morning and I have thoughts (what else is new?)! I recently watched Moonlight, Hidden Figures, and La La Land (When to fit in the three-hour Fences, who knows?)! And I finished Laughable Loves by Kundera last night and am moving on to Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers!

Whew.

Also you know how I was talking about going with the flow yesterday, and how without bread sometimes you need to give up on your ambitions of a sandwich day? Today was a sandwich day. Mmm, yeah. I love peanut butter.

So what classes am I taking this semester?