Celebrity Skin

It’s probably pretty rough being a Hollywood starlet. You can’t eat, you can’t visibly age. Your opinion rarely matters, and you’re in constant competition with a den of babyfaced hopefuls. Your livelihood is based directly on how badly strangers want to fuck you. And that career-making sex appeal is a factor of your youth—with few exceptions you have to look blond, big-eyed, wrinkle free, pubeless, with the figure of a 12-year-old boy (sometimes with bonus fake boobs added on at the last minute).

I shouldn’t be surprised that eventually this forced infantilization gets internalized. Of course it does—these are the very people who popularized the adult onesie known as the Juicy Couture sweatsuit. And this tendency toward the childlike, the desexualized, the woman-as-clean-slate trope, carries into the prevailing fragrance tastes of Hollywood’s recent and current ingénues.

Easily the most popular perfume (if you can call it that) on this list of celebrity perfumes is an abomination called Clean. “Inspired by soap,” the company’s ad copy chirps pathetically. Soap is so inspiring! It’s the new Barack Obama. Clean is the aggressively Scentenally fragrance of choice for today’s young starlets (Ali Landry, Ali Larter, Alicia Silverstone, Amy Smart, Britney Spears, Brittany Murphy, Hilarie Burton, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Jessica Simpson, Kelly Rowland, Summer Altice and Taryn Manning all wear it) as well as those whose young-starlet days are behind them (Cameron Diaz, Charlize Theron, Courtney Cox, Daryl Hannah, Demi Moore, Gabrielle Union, Halle Berry, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Tilly, Jenny Garth, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Nicole Kidman, Rita Wilson, Sandra Bullock, Sarah Jessica Parker).

Curious, I sampled two perfumes from the line: Clean Original and Clean Warm Cotton. The former is advertised as “a fragrance option for those who do not like to smell like a particular perfume.” Rather, it is for those who like to smell like sherbet and self-tanning lotion melting together on the seat of a factory-fresh automobile. Warm Cotton is a stomach-turning mixture of detergent, fabric softener, Soft Scrub, clean bathroom tiles and an office right after the cleaning staff has blasted it with industrial solvents.

These are perfumes for people who fear their own bodies, their inner workings and desires. As my friend K said, “They should just call their brand My Vagina’s Dirty.”

I also sampled something called Child, beloved, apparently, by Denise Richards, Hilary Duff, Jacinda Barrett, Jenny Garth, Jessica Simpson, Leann Rimes, Lindsay Lohan, Madonna (disappointing, because some of her choices—Fracas, Folavril, Eau d’Hadrien, Escentric Molecules—are grown-up and good), Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton (“loves it!” according to the list), Rebecca Gayheart, Sigourney Weaver, Tiffany Amber Thiessen and Tori Spelling. All of these ladies can save their money by just applying a film of baby oil and lanolin to their skin, as it would have exactly the same effect. Yes, this is a perfume used by grown-ass women who want to smell like infants.

Also popular in this crowd: Comptoir Sud Pacifique, a nauseating product line whose variations run the gamut from vanilla chocolate to vanilla vanilla. I don’t mind when a little girl wants to smell like an ice cream sundae (though I prefer when kids smell like grass and dirt and skin), but when adults like Ashlee Simpson, Britney Spears, Brittany Murphy (who also wears “Calgon Hawaiian Ginger Mist”), Cameron Diaz, Denise Richards, Fergie, Juliette Binoche (domage!), LeeLee Sobieski and Sienna Miller go out of their way to smell like candy, it makes me long for the days when leading ladies weren’t afraid to look, act and, apparently, smell like adults: Marlene Dietrich, for example, wore Creed’s Angelique Encens, Tabac Blond, Bandit, Vol du Nuit, Indiscret and Fracas. Jean Harlow wore Mitsouko. Brigitte Bardot wore Jicky and the original Vent Vert, both masterpieces. Catherine Deneuve’s list surely puts her in some kind of hall of fame: “Deneuve, Sables, Papillons, Chanel No. 22, Ormonde, Eau d’Hadrien, Chanel No. 5, L’Heure Bleue, Chamade, Chanel No. 19, Un Lys, Thé Pour un Été, Noir Epices, Lys Mediteranée, Sacrebleu, Y by Yves St. Laurent, Carnal Flower.” YES, DENEUVE.

Meanwhile Jamie Lynn Spears wears something called Barbie Fragrance?! Babies having babies, y’all. A throng of over-the-hill (meaning 30+) actresses wear a yoga oil called Kai (Alyssa Milano, Charlize Theron, Carmen Electra, Debra Messing, Jennifer Connelly, Jennifer Garner, Julia Roberts, Mariah Carey, Pamela Anderson, Tea Leoni, Winona Ryder and many, many more). Britney, Christina, Mena Suvari, Rachel Lee Cook, Renee Zellwegger and a few others wear a line I’ve never heard of before: “I AM,” as in “I Am Love,” “I Am Rich,” “I Am Wild,” “I Am Hot.” If you have to keep telling people, then you’re probably not. I feel bad for Tyra Banks’s friends, who have to keep smelling her Cinnamon Bun and “Jaqua Buttercream Frosting Body Butter.” Eva Longoria says “she’s allergic to perfume and prefers soap.” In light of her wardrobe and behavior choices, that’s probably a blessing.

Every once in a while, that list gives me reason to hope. There are women who could easily fall into the Kai/Clean/Child camp who instead display good, mature taste: Cindy Crawford had a scent created just for her by the genius Christopher Brosius. Elle MacPherson wears the elegant Vetiver by Guerlain and the dark, mysterious Passage d’Enfer—suddenly Elle MacPherson seems surprisingly sexy. Julianna Margulies, ex-star of soapy nighttime dramas, likes the pretty, feminine Mûre et Musc. Selma Blair’s tastes are pleasingly idiosyncratic: Ralph, Joy, Tea for Two, Blv Eau Parfumée, Nyakio, 10 Corso Como. Diane Sawyer has a “vast fragrance collection.” (I always knew I liked her.) Daniel Handler and Nick Hornby have had personal scents made for them by Yosh Han, who also created a fragrance for the San Francisco Opera (I would love to smell that one!).

There should be a job in Hollywood like the fashion stylist, but for perfume: a personal fragrance advisor. When Demi Moore and Charlize Theron are being dressed so nicely and yet are allowed to disgrace themselves olfactorily, someone needs to step in! Wouldn’t you like to get a whiff of the sweet/spicy Safran Troublant whenever Moore walks by? Wouldn’t 31 Rue Cambon, a milky chypre, be heavenly on Theron? It even rhymes with her name. Daryl Hannah: Cristalle. Jennifer Connelly: Un Lys. Britney Spears: Lady Vengeance. This is a fun game.

The list also provides some quality laughs. Aretha Franklin was “seen buying eight bottles of Clive Christian fragrance,” purportedly the world’s priciest perfume. My favorite, though, is this: Eva Gabor used “Florence Gunnarson No. 67 to scent her pool (as did her sister).” If today’s starlets can’t exercise the intelligence and enormous good taste of a Dietrich or a Deneuve, at least they can go in the other direction, equally courageous but balls-out tacky and preposterous. I’d prefer to go swimming in Eva Gabor's sandalwood-and-oakmoss-scented pool than stand in the cheap, candied air-freshener wake of the latest Allure cover girl any day.

P.S. Speaking of starlets and their terrible perfume choices, what possessed Kate Moss to put her name on this lame, amateurish, boring, generic, fruity-floral might-as-well-be-a-drugstore-fragrance? It smells like a magazine, with all the scented inserts mixing together. I admit I was curious enough to order a bottle, because La Moss has tended to like some good stuff (according to the list, her tastes run toward the sweet, the floral and the English: Bluebell, Anaïs Anaïs, Agent Provocateur, Stella, L’Heure Bleue). Does anyone want it? If so, let us know in the comments what scent you’re wearing this spring, and why. Do you change your perfumes according to season? And what will you wear this summer? Or, if you want to play Celebrity Perfume Consultant, let us know in the comments what you’d give whom. I'll pick someone to send the Kate to. I know it’s weird to offer as a prize a perfume I’ve just dissed, but someone much smarter than me, the awesome Tania Sanchez, calls Kate “a small-scale Badgley Mischka built out of a bare berry and a sketch of a rose.” Not bad! And fragrance, like everything else, is subjective. If you’re looking for a simple, pretty, clean floral, you could do a lot worse.


(Image is from Lauren Greenfield’s Girl Culture, available on Amazon.)