Unscented? Not Really!

Just some advice. Don’t ever buy anything that says, “unscented” on it. I made that mistake and discovered that there is no such thing as “unscented”. All that label means is they didn’t add a scent to it. I thought, well that might be good, not to be overpowered by an added scent. So, I bought it.

I’m talking about hairspray here. I don’t care how you feel about hairspray.  I live in Florida and I need it! Most women, perhaps men too, suffer from crazy curly hair in humidity. Me, just the opposite. I look like a half-drowned puppy, so a little hairspray to keep my bangs from drooping into my eyes like an English Sheepdog is necessary. But unscented hairspray doesn’t mean you smell nothing. It means you smell just the ingredients they put in it. So I looked. Just what am I smelling, because it smells awful!!!

First is water. That’s probably not the culprit. The second ingredient is Dimethyl Ether. Ether! Isn’t that the stuff they use in spy movies to knock someone out? Actually, that might be the offender. I did a little checking. That’s the propellant in aerosols, but it’s also the stuff that makes up biofuels. A little heads up on that would have been good! Unscented would mean I smell like gas! Then there is a long list of other stuff I have no idea what it is, and unless you’re a chemist, neither do you.

Toward the lower third of the list is, “Fragrance”. Well, that’s a little vague and since it is clearly printed on the front of the can, “Unscented”, why is one of the ingredients, “Fragrance”? Is fragrance even an ingredient? According to the dictionary, Fragrance is the quality of having a pleasant scent. I don’t think “quality” and “ingredient” are interchangeable words. And if the maker of this so-called “Fragrance” thinks it is in any way pleasant, they have serious sinus issues!

Way down at the bottom of the list we have White Lily Bulb Extract, Green Tea Leaf Extract, and Rice Protein. Okay, I don’t know if this combination just smells bad, or there is really not enough of them to push through the other 13 mystery ingredients to make a difference. Perhaps their presence here has something to do with hairspray, and not an attempt to add a scent to an unscented product. That’s what “Fragrance” was for.

When you buy anything from flowers, to fruit, to houseplants don’t you smell it first? Our sense of smell tells us we’re walking through a beautiful flower garden, or someone is having a barbecue. We can smell the aroma of pine needles warming in the sun, and salt in the ocean breeze. Smell also warns us of a fire, or a gas leak, or rotten eggs. So what made me think to buy unscented hairspray? From now on it’s nothing but rose, or lavender, or citrus, because unscented is really not unscented and smells more like that ethanol we talked about earlier, or perhaps worse, that mysterious “Fragrance”.