BUBBLEGUM CHIC

Tuberose. Jasmine. Fruit notes. White musk.

5/2/15

I don’t know how you spend your Saturday mornings, but today I spent mine submerged face-down in a Pepto-Bismol gasoline spill with Mariah Carey serenading my semi-conscious corpse and maniacally throwing glitter at my head.  This was my initial impression with Bubblegum Chic. On initial application, I was deluged with the vagina dentata of pink sickly sweet floral-fruit attack and left for dead. I think my face was paralyzed for about five seconds, and I lost brain function for about ten, as I tottered and tried not to crumple and hit my head on a corner of the bathroom sink.  I smelled, first and foremost, those gasoline fumes, and almost simultaneously the overpowering reek of bubblegum, but petal-infested gum, like a girls-only kindergarten convention had congregated in the tuberose fields and fired hubba bubba nerf pellets at the flowers, creating an abominable hybrid of petals and pink sticky goo.

The tuberose is an indolic flower, as is jasmine, which can result in a decaying smell reminiscent of feces that is activated when in combination with other notes.  That was the gasoline that flooded my nostrils. Some people are heavily drawn to that animalic association, which is not that hard to believe, as tuberose and jasmine are two perfuming favorites.  It also, as with all scents, can smell utterly different from person to person as our body chemistry is not the same, and also our attractions differ, so what had me wanting to divorce my arm to get away from the scent, was pronounced by my mother-in-law as smelling ‘wonderful’ on me.  Fortunately for me, the crazy catnip of the fruit-flower accord wore off after the first half hour, leaving the jasmine and tuberose to settle into a somewhat bearable but ‘too-potent-for-me’ white floral scent and allowing the white musk to press the flowers down a bit to make sure they behaved themselves. Half star added for the vivid originality, but as I had to give an acerbically-deferential nod to the queasiness it inflicted on me by applying green eyeliner so that it would match my complexion that day, I have to give the stigma of a single star.

Rating: 1 1/2 gags for air.