Celebrity Fragrances Suck

Posted at 12:00 PM Dec 18, 2008

By Kenny Herzog



It's that time of year again. Holiday-shopping season. That apocalyptic assemblage of weeks in which retail outlets become surrogate synagogues and major corporations push unnecessary product rollouts on a discount/one-of-a-kind-gift-hungry public.

Which means it's also time for celebrities to shill themselves with all the grace and pride of a struggling sitcom during May sweeps. And in particular, it becomes ground zero for the marketing of celebrity fragrances. Over the last couple of weeks, you may have seen ads for perfumes and colognes bearing the name, likeness and, presumably, grundle odor, of super-famous hotties and hunks.


Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Hilary Duff and, yes, even Tim McGraw (whose "McGraw" cologone is fashioned to resemble, you guessed it, a cowboy hat) are among those in the fray-grance.


Now, of course, there's the obvious obnoxiois (and no doubt noxious) element of these musicians-cum-walking brands passing off their perfumes as genuine extensions of their creative persona and personal lifestyle. Britney's Curious spray has as much to do with how she warms up to bedroom sensuality as her, well, Fantasy concotion does to her sense of romantic whimsy.

But what's truly, unforgivably egregious about these pungent products and their even more odious promotional push is their ruthless manipulation of an already exploited fanbase. Here we are, stuck in a recession but acquiescing to the intrinsic desire to satisfy our loved ones on Christmas. And there they are, protected from the economic downturn in a way even power brokers and basketball coaches haven't managed to be sancitifed with. Yet the commercials for their useless, odorless, wallet-raping fragrances are inundating TV viewers, implying that, "Hey, rather than secure our own limited finances for the next month, let's line your arrogant, puppeteered coffers more than we already have by purchasing your overpriced music and getting sucked into your larger spectable of self-manufactured hype."

You know what? Fuck you and your sucky colognes. I hope your hot water goes out like half the people striving to afford your fashionable scent and you have to douse yourself in the crap in lieu of getting a reasonable shower.

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