My first psychic experience happened when I was 10 years old, sitting in the car with my ‘big sister,’ from one of those befriend a poor youth programs.  It was just before Christmas and we were exchanging gifts.  I knew, as she handed me the box, that there would be a bottle of perfume inside.  And indeed, much to my chagrin, there it was.  A white enamel bottle, in the shape of some animal, filled with a sickly scent.  I said, “Thank you,” but what I really felt inside was that this ‘sister’ did not know me one little bit, to have given a present like this, so unsuited to a wild soul.

But how could she have known me?  Indeed, it took me many years to know myself.

When I was twelve I remember being out in the grass and watching ants crawl up my leg, they got caught up in the long hairs there and it tickled, but before they could get to my skin I would flick them off.  Years later when I lived out west it happened with ticks, and I was quite pleased to squish this little bug before it bit me, giving me Lyme disease or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.  I didn’t know at twelve, and I didn’t care at twenty, that as a woman, I was flouting all the rules.   

There is so much grooming advice given to women that undermines our own personal power.

The first, and most insidious grooming rule is the required removal of nearly all body hair except on the top of the head.  Women are enjoined to shave, wax, laser, tweeze and bleach every hair under their arms, on their faces; thinning eyebrows, removing all hair from the upper lip and in front of the ears.  The entire leg, and to varying degrees, the entire pubic area.  Some women have even been known to wax their arms down to their wrists.

What is this obsession with hairlessness?

In the first place, removing all the underarm, leg and pubic hair creates the look on a grown woman of being a child.  It is no mistake the abuse of child pornography in a country that forces all of its women to look as infantile as possible and then to be sexual beings.  

We have been led to view the body as ‘unclean’ in its natural state.   The truth could not be further from that.

Each part of the body that is thickly covered with hair, is an erogenous zone.  The purpose of this hair, is to hold and disseminate the scent of a woman, or a man, helping to attract the opposite sex.

Obsession.  Banish.  Contradiction.  Decadence.  Desire.  Unzipped.

These are the names given by the Madison avenue mavens for perfume scents.  It is a multi-billion dollar industry which, like the cosmetic and fashion industries, is designed to play on the fears of inadequacy and the deep seated longings of women, and increasingly, of men.

The primary ingredient for all perfumes is musk, which is collected from the sweat glands around the anus of a musk deer, an endangered deer native to Tibet, India, Pakistan and Mongolia.  The animal needs to be killed to extract the musk, but PETA doesn’t seem to have jumped on this bandwagon yet.  The word ‘musk’ comes from the sanskrit word for testicle.  Basically women are putting testicle juice on their bodies to attract a man. 

But that is what these parfumeries want.  They want you to be so insecure about your own natural body, that you put testicle juice behind your ears.  They want you to fear you are not enough.  They want your senses to be unclear and your confidence low.  They want to tell you what to wear, where to live, how to shop.  What to look like and smell like.  And then…….they tell you.....you’ll be happy.

But our bodies are infinitely more intelligent than Madison Avenue.  Each person has a signature scent, the same way we have unique fingerprints.  There is a natural scent, or perfume, that we put out that is smellable to our conscious minds.  But there is also a ‘secret’ scent called pheromones.  These are small scent molecules undetectable to our noses, but detectable to the brain stem where the nose brings them upon inhale.  These ‘pheromones’ have been called the ‘sex’ scent.  It is part of that invisible ‘je ne sais quois’ that attracts or repels us from a person.  Some of the research done on pheromones has gone so far as to say that people with DNA unmatchable to our own will be found repulsive to us through these pheromones.

So many people mask their own natural odors with copious amounts of perfumes, that our built in fail-safe discernment process is undermined.  We can no longer tell, with our most primal instinct, if this person would be a good mate for us.

So we fall for all the usual tricks.  And here we are then, walking down the aisle with Mr. or Miss. Right.

Fast forward to the weeks after the wedding.  Now we are living together.  And sleeping together.  And showering together.  And you don’t always put your perfume or cologne on right away.  Sometimes you just climb into bed clean, but smelling like your true natural self.  And then, look out.  All of the sudden you find out, wow, this guy or this girl really stinks.  I don’t mean he’s got b.o. but there is something about him that I just don’t………like.

And there it is.  You can’t get away from it.  You’re married.  You’re married to the wrong man.  All because of Calvin Klein.  Just ask Kim Kardashian.

There is no money to be made if a woman feels good about herself, confident in her looks and bearing, and sure in her spirit and soul.  It is important to remember that Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein do not have your best interests at heart.  They are here to make money, nothing more.  And the advent of consumerism began with the adage to create a need, and then design a product to fill it.

Humans have always adorned and transformed their bodies.  From the lip plates worn by African tribeswomen to the poisonous make-up made with various colors of lead from the time of Cleopatra.   But underneath it all, there is no way to not be who you are.  And eventually, possibly to your chagrin, your significant other will find out.  My advice:  go unscented before the wedding, and save yourself some time and heartache.

The right scent for a woman is none at all - Cicero