The love of lotions and potions is universal. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be a booming beauty industry. And with products that look good, smell good and ultimately make you feel good, what’s not to love?
After all, who can deny the joy of immersing yourself between tubs and tubes of body soufflé, body butter and even body yoghurt? It seems that the beauty industry is well aware of the mass appeal of food. And by creating delightful associations in our minds, they are essentially engaging more of our senses in the purchasing process. So when you buy a product you can not only see, touch and smell it, you can also taste it in a figurative sort of way. Just think about cocoa butter, pink grapefruit, strawberries and cream, oatmeal coffee and dragon fruit berry. Delicious!
And with so many different product offerings, scents and – dare I say – flavours, it’s possible to enjoy a large variety of sensory experiences all contained within these pretty tubs, tubes, bottles and sprays. If you close your eyes and imagine whipped coconut body butter with mango lip balm and sea breeze body mist, you can almost see yourself on a tropical beach sipping cocktails. And buying a few beauty products is a small price to pay for a tropical island experience.
That said, not all beauty products and their respective scents are necessarily winning combinations. In fact, sometimes they definitely don’t have the desired effect. This is where dreamy lotions turn into rather nasty potions.
A case in point is my moisturising body butter with gentle olive oil and chamomile extracts. It’s thick and glossy, very moisturising and smells quite nice in its container. However, after smearing it all over my legs and feet one night, my husband turned around and asked me quite innocently if I had just sprayed Doom. Yes, that’s right! Doom! The foul-smelling stuff you use to kill insects.
“Umm… no!” I said feeling slightly confused. “I’m just using this olive body butter.”
But, apparently, when smelt at a distance, my lovely olive lotion smells no better than stinky insecticide. Go figure! Now that’s what you call a potent romance-killing potion!
On that note, I can’t help thinking about lavender. I’m sure lavender is one of the most prolific scents used in the beauty industry. You can find everything from soap and shower gel to hand cream and foam bath in lavender. If you want something in lavender, you don’t have to look very far. It’s everywhere! Like a plague that’s contaminated all beauty products. The lavender plague! And, I have to ask, does anyone – besides old ladies – actually like the scent of lavender? Because, honestly, I think it stinks and I’ll take my olive insecticide over a lavender lotion any day.
So, while it’s hard to resist the urge to indulge in almond milk and honey, vanilla bean, white rose and jasmine, orange blossom and coconut lime – even if it’s just in liquid form – not all lotions are made equal. There will be times when you unknowingly bring home a pungent potion. But then I guess you can’t always be the rose. Sometimes, you’re going to be the locust left holding the lavender.
Audrey Whyte 
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