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After a long time without the fun of it, I’ve got a new fruity floral up for you to please inhale: Mayday (TM).  Once the rasberry makes itself known, the petals fold out with rose and jasmine, followed by duskier, textured scents
that give the fragrance an anchor.

I’d tell you what it was inspired by, but mostly, someone gave me a natural rasberry bouquet tincture for the December holidays, and I wanted an excuse to play with it. I’ve also been spending most of my time at home, and have cabin fever, so the idea of frolicking through fields or running around on a desert island shouting at airplanes sort of appeals to me (the latter in a not really kind of way.)

Only at Magickal Realism. Give it a whiff.

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The perfumers and bath and body creators who use synthetics (i.e. fragrance oils) presumably have good reasons for using them. Usually, the reason is purefly financial: synthetics are produced cheap and let’s face it, most big-name perfumers are trapped in the corporate spiral so cheap the materials must be. Sometimes, it’s for a legitimately ethical reason: using the synthetic options may prevent the actual plant from going extinct through overuse.
Sometimes the scent can’t be found in nature to begin with.

I get it, I do. I just won’t do it – I like my naturals, well, natural. What’s alternately amusing/irritating me is this “praise synthetics/slam naturalism” bent I’m seeing more and more of out of the big-names in the perfume industry. The reason it’s tweaking me is that I can smell their fear, and it’s pure, superstitious, baloney fear, the kind that led to people getting stuffed in Iron Maidens during the Inquisition. These superstitious are frothing forth from men who claim “scientist” in their job title. Apparently “unscientific” is the new “heretic” among perfumers. Should I fear someone from Quest Chemicals is going to show up at my door and haul me off for perverting people with natural materials? Will my oils be cataloged and hidden in some basement with secret passageways that lead to the Vatican? Geez, I thought I had enough to fear living under a regime run by George Bush. It’s a sad day – I openly practice witchcraft, and I’m less fearful and superstitious than these science types.

I’ve been staying away from the synthetics debate because I haven’t researched synthetics that thoroughly, and I just don’t know the materials as initimately as I do natural materials. But this completely unsubtle movement against naturals has my hackles up: there’s something going on behind the scenes, and the syntheticists are scared, so scared that they’re bullying and slamming every naturalist they can. Perfume and Flavorist has started a series called In Praise of Synthetics. In an interview on National Public Radio on January 21st, Chandler Burr felt it necessary to close his interview with an unasked-about and ompletely unnecessary slam against the naturals movement. It’s not the first time he’s made that slam, either, even though from what I gather, no one was asking then, either. IFRA has been doing its darnedest to make synthetics our only chemical option in perfume creation, going so far as to issue unresearched data indicating natural materials are far more allergenic than they actually are (and conveniently ignoring the nature of allergy and the way that allergy works.)What makes much of this naturalists-stalking so ridiculous and Inquisition-like is that even among artisan perfumers, those of us actively in business as natural perfumers are something of a rarity – so much so that we don’t really have accurate numbers for how many of us there are. To get down to the numbers you would have to sort out people who make perfume only as a hobby (I would guess that’s most of us) from smartasses with an eyedropper and a few oils (next level) from those of us actively in business. Among those of us who are actively in business, you would have to separate the essential oil suppliers from the specialists.

I would place myself under that last group of specialists and I suspect my circumstances are still nontypical. Most home bath and body makers in the US are in soap, because soap is where the money is at here. Those of us still specializing in perfume are micro-businesses; our market share is people who are either perfume collectors who purchase equally from artisan naturalists and big name companies, or who have a deep-seated animosity towards syntheticists and their ilk that no amount of praising synthetics is going to unseat.

So far, I’ve left synthetics alone, just because I prefer not to use them. But the way the big chemical makers are carrying on is smelling like a superstition-driven witch hunt. So excuse me, I’m going to go hug my all-natural perfume organ now.

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My Ball Gag fragrance was included in a treasury. The gal swallowing the pearl charm there is my friend Brenda, who is the designer at Dancing Jems.

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Among a collection of other year-of-the-rat like images. :)

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According to the Environmental News Network, a study at the University of Granada finds housewives much better about recycling than university students.

There are of course some theories being applied to it including the Theory of Planned Behaviour and and some pseudo-philosophic psychological theory including moral makeup, since university students perceived “more obstacles.” It wouldn’t be a study if the students didn’t at least try to get all collegiate about it.

And it wouldn’t be collegiate unless they completely overlooked some obvious factors concerning the people studied.¹ While the study samples are still a bit on the small side – some 500 students to 100 housewives, which is a significant sample but still less than the 1000 plus required for empirical data – it has some merit, espeically if you think about the life of a housewife versus the life of a college student.

²

1. Assuming most of these college students lived in dormitories and had meal plans, such activities as meal planning and space planning were not part of their routine activities. To most recycling and similar activites would be “going out of their way” just because so much of the self-management parts of their lives, particularly cleaning and meals, are actually relegated to other parties in a university setting, causing them not to consider it.

Missing information: how many students lived in dormitories? How many commuted? How many were “traditional” aged students? How much crossover was there between “housewives” and increasingly common “nontrad” students?

Also, while it doesn’t seem relevant, I think it would also be highly relevant: how many of these students were prone to hoarding practices? College students are often lousy recyclers, but when it comes to repurposing, they are usually at the front of that brave new world.

2. Housewives are the de factor managers of their households. Any cohabitation is a business arrangement just as much as it is familial, and the women involved will likely be concerned with long-term sustainability of their land and immediate environment, especially if they have children. Recycling advertising is very much directed at homes, and women – it’s almost always a female voiceover in those “please recycle” television advertisments.

Some relevant questions that are missing on the housewives end:
How many have children? How many have part time jobs? How many live in apartments? How many are also students?

I personally am not surprised by this finding – college students believe they have no time, while housewives really do have no time despite the stereotype of them watching soaps and eating bon bons. The housewives don’t have time because they actually are doing all that work of recycling. Heck, I work mostly from home and I never know a moments peace because there’s always something else I need to be doing!

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1. Yes, I do have a complete college education, and I graduated cum laude. That’s why I’m making a little fun of this. [↩]
2. image by gordasm on flickr [↩]