Smells Like a Lawsuit

The scent or aroma of something is inherently intangible, yet its social effects are less so. It can be the reason someone finds themselves enamoured with another. It could be the reason for the tears in your eyes. Alternatively, it could cause stomach-churning disgust and irrational decisions. Something about our sense of smell is primal. The way we can smell concepts like petrichor or even emotions like fear indicates that our sense of smell is connected to a basic instinct for survival. Hence, we erroneously take our sense of disgust as an objective fact and as a justification for acting in any way to avoid it. It would be sound logic if it weren’t for the fact that disgust is taught; children under two do not have an innate sense of disgust (Sivaraman and Skoler, 2023). They learn to associate certain smells with disgust and, by extension, uncleanliness and danger.

In her work “Olfactory Ethics”, Louks explores how scent not only indicates race but also class in the popular consciousness. The idea that specific demographics have a bad smell that indicates a lack of hygiene is more than an individual insecurity; it culminates in trends with significant consequences (Louks, 2024). 

The association of dark skin and especially blackness with a bad odour has been a driving factor, causing black women to invest their spending power into hygiene products. The intersection of their blackness being associated with being foul-smelling and the necessity that women always smell nice under the patriarchy means that they spend on products and are a targeted demographic for advertisers when it comes to scented hygiene products (Thorpe et al., 2024). It is the same reason why skin-lightening products and hygiene products are often packaged together. By buying a skin-lightening soap, the consumer can be rid of both their “foul odour” and the feature commonly associated with it. 

Smell is often the reason for discrimination in areas of life like housing. In the Singaporean and Malaysian rental market, Indian people face constant discrimination as landlords skirt anti-discrimination laws and enforce a preference against Indian tenants. The reason often given is concern that the property’s value will go down if they take on an Indian tenant, as the smell may linger after they leave and cause a nuisance for neighbours during their stay. As minorities in both countries, this compounds the feeling of ostracisation felt by the Indian Singaporean and Indian Malaysian communities, even as they grow in population and economic power (Laavanya, 2022). 

Our sense of smell is an important way of interacting with the world. It informs us about what is around us; it typically follows the logic that what smells bad is unhygienic and unsafe. Over time, we have come to associate a lack of hygiene with a lack of moral character: “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” (Preston and Sitter, 2012) This sentiment can be easily flipped on its head; those who are unclean are morally flawed and should be punished. This manifests as a lack of empathy for those who are unable to access resources to practice good hygiene, regardless of whether they have a choice in the matter. A familiar sentiment for those who grew up in poverty, where a bad smell became a cause for ridicule instead of concern (Louks, 2024). Perhaps examining our own sense of disgust is necessary in order to extend a sense of empathy to all.

Bibliography 

Laavanya, K. (2022). Doubly minoritised: Indianness in Singapore and xenophobia as racism. [Online] Academia | SG. Available at: https://www.academia.sg/academic-views/indianness-in-singapore/ [Accessed 31 January 2026].

Louks, A. (2024) Olfactory ethics: the politics of smell in modern and contemporary prose [PhD thesis] [Online]. University of Cambridge. Available at: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/528f479f-fd3c-43fd-9463-7c2923560573 [Accessed 31 January 2026]. 

Manalansan, M.F. (2024). Immigrant Lives and the Politics of Olfaction in the Global City. In Drobnick, J. (ed.).  The Smell Culture Reader. [Online] Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, pp.41–52. Available at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003579540-5/immigrant-lives-politics-olfaction-global-city-martin-manalansan [Accessed 31 January 2026]. 

Preston, J.L., Sitter R.S. (2012). Cleanliness and godliness: Mutual association between two kinds of personal purity. [Online] Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(6), pp. 1365-1368 Available at: Cleanliness and godliness: Mutual association between two kinds of personal purity - ScienceDirect [Accessed 31 January 2026]

Thorpe, S., Vigil, K., Iyiewuare, P., Malone, N., Peterson, R.L. and Hargons, C.N. (2024). “Make Sure You Wash Your Monkey”: Multigenerational Vaginal Hygiene Messages from Black Women. Health Communication, 40(1), pp.128-140. Available at: doi:10.1080/10410236.2024.2335057.[Accessed 31 Jan. 2026].

Sivaraman, M. and Skoler, T.S. (2023). Yucky! How do Toddlers Learn About Disgust? 16 February 2023. Psychology Today. [Online]. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smart-families/202302/yucky-how-do-toddlers-learn-about-disgust [Accessed 31 January 2026].