Ordering volatile openings: instrumentation and the rationalization of bodily odors

ABSTRACT

Odors define many things: plants, foods, people. Although the rise of instrumental flavor and odor analysis techniques from the 1950s to 1980s, largely driven by the food and perfumery industries, allowed scientists unprecedented access to knowledge about the structures and origins of odorific molecules, these techniques and their influence on the social imagination remain relatively unexamined. Working at the intersection of Gender, Food, and Science and Technology Studies, this paper examines how the technique of gas chromatography-olfactometry (GC-O), key to how perfumers and flavorists managed sensory experience, was mobilized to scientifically categorize the bodily odors of immigrants and women as other. Through analysis of the instrumental and sensory techniques used to quantify as well as qualify bodily odor, I examine how researchers mimicked patterns for ordering the world of taste and smell in their efforts to characterize and master women’s bodily odors. The indexing of bodily odors through GC-O highlighted the porous nature of the body and its smells, even as researchers, physicians, and producers of feminine “hygiene” products promoted commercial anti-fungal medications, douches, and suppositories for their promise to reign in the excess smells of the body and its microbial and mycobial companions.

KEYWORDS:

• Sensory politics
• odor
• gender
• race
• gas chromatography
• sensory science
• sensory labor

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to participants in the Edible Feminisms workshop for their helpful comments. The fantastic cohort of undergraduate students in Aimee Bhang’s “Queer Feminist Materialisms” course, Aimee Bhang, Hi’ilei Hobart, Rachel Lee, Heather Paxson, and Sarah Tracy all pushed me to think more carefully about my argument and sources, while Brian Smith led me to sources that confirmed my hunch about Dravnieks’ influence. Finally, a heartfelt thanks to my two anonymous reviewers. A Hixon-Riggs Early Career Fellowship at Harvey Mudd College supported research and writing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. With regards to food, this appears in the collaborative work that Howard Moskowitz – a well-known researcher in consumer perception – did with Dravnieks in the 1970s in determining standardized methods for monitoring pleasantness (Moskowitz, Dravnieks, and Klarmon 1976; Moskowitz et al. 1974). Similarly, Dravnieks’ work on the Atlas of Odor Characteristics remains a foundational resource for contemporary research in odor behavior (Koulakov et al. 2011).

2. Berenstein (2017) offers insight into the role of mass spectroscopy in facilitating identification of the compounds separated out by GC.

3. Dravnieks does not account for non-binary modes of being in his work.

4. Dravnieks never reports testing his own body’s olfactory signature, despite his Latvian heritage.

5. Tracy offers a brief taste of how transforming flavor into data has been mobilized in dividing Eastern and Western cuisines (Beaton et al. 2017).

6. Staff at IITRI indicate they currently have no records from that division; the institution that bought the division in which Dravnieks was housed, Alion, indicated in personal communication on 11/8/16 that the records from that time period are no longer available.

7. In using woman/women here I am following the author’s wording. All were remunerated an unreported amount for their participation.

8. As with the 1973 study, ten participants were used, with nine samples per participant sampled over a period of six months. It is possible that these were the same participants, and sampling occurred at similar times; the published protocol fails to give any additional detail beyond that these were “healthy young women” or race this time. It remains unclear what role Joan Shah played in the naming and categorization of odors in this process.

9. Contrast these odor descriptors with those put forth by Eve Ensler’s (2001) Vagina Monologues: Earth. Wet garbage. God. Water. A brand-new morning. Depth. Sweet ginger. Sweat. Depends. Musk. Me. No smell, I’ve been told. Pineapple. Chalice essence. Paloma Picasso. Earthy meat and musk. Cinnamon and cloves. Roses. Spicy musky jasmine forest, deep, deep forest. Damp moss. Yummy candy. The South Pacific. Somewhere between fishes and lilacs. Peaches. The woods. Ripe fruit. Strawberry-kiwi tea. Fish. Heaven. Vinegar and water. Light, sweet liquor. Cheese. Ocean. Sexy. A sponge. The beginning.

10. For more on this, see Miller (1997, 102–104).

Additional information

Funding

A Hixon-Riggs Early Career Fellowship at Harvey Mudd College supported research and writing.

Notes on contributors

Christy Spackman

Christy Spackman is currently Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, where she is jointly appointed between the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Arts, Media and Engineering. Her research examines how technologies of taste intersect with and shape the way people interact with the environment and each other.