Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
The other day I lined up to get into a…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2001 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
The other day I lined up to get into a BART car and I smelled some sort of perfume that, I presume, one of the women in the line was wearing. On several occasions, I have smelled such scents in women's magazines (e.g., ym, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen). Advertisers place scented strips -- samples of ther perfumes -- next to pictures of glamorous women or forests or decadent soirées or intimate romance.
But when I smelled that perfume, the most immediate association wasn't to glamor or romance. I thought, "Oh, that smell reminds me of reading ym."
