An Open Letter to the Macho Bros Who Are Trying to Kill Us With Body Spray
Dear Mexican Macho Bros Who Bathe in Cologne, we need to talk. First, we love you guys. Seriously. Mexican culture has given America incredible food, music, traditions, strong families, hardworking people, and approximately 97 percent of the guys willing to climb onto a roof in July when the rest of us are standing on the ground saying, “Yeah, I think I’m gonna call somebody.” But some of you have also apparently given us a new form of chemical warfare: The Cologne Cloud. You know who you are. Or actually, judging by the amount you’re wearing, maybe you don’t know who you are anymore because the fumes have erased your short-term memory.
Your Cologne Should Not Be Able to Make Deliveries Without You
This open letter was inspired by a bizarre phenomenon. A delivery driver drops off a cardboard box and leaves. Ten minutes later, you walk into the garage and somehow the driver is still there. Not physically, of course. His cologne is. The cardboard box smells like it spent Saturday night grinding against somebody at a nightclub. You pick it up and think, “Why does my Amazon package smell like it owns a lowered Silverado?”
How does this even happen? How much body spray must a human being apply for the fragrance to transfer from his body, through the air, onto a cardboard package, strongly enough that another person can smell it several minutes later? That is not “wearing cologne.” That is fumigating freight.
Then It Happened With Food
This is where we need to draw the line, gentlemen. Packages are one thing, but food is another. A food-delivery driver drops off dinner in the garage. You go outside a few minutes later and the entire garage smells like somebody detonated a grenade inside the fragrance department at Macy’s. Sir, the tacos should not smell like you.
There should never be confusion between carne asada and Eau de Macho. If your DoorDash delivery arrives and I can smell you more strongly than I can smell the food, we have exceeded the maximum safe operating capacity of cologne. You have somehow defeated onions. Do you understand how powerful you have to smell to defeat onions?
The Locker Room Extermination Crew
And then there is the gym locker room. You’ve just finished working out. Everybody is quietly changing clothes, showering, checking their phones, and trying to get on with their day when Macho Cologne Bro arrives. Naturally, his phone is playing music on speaker at approximately the same volume normally used to evacuate a building. There are headphones everywhere. Earbuds have existed for decades. Bluetooth technology is widely available. Humanity has solved this problem. Doesn’t matter. Our hero needs the entire locker room to hear his music because apparently getting dressed after three sets of bench presses requires a soundtrack audible from the parking lot.
Then comes the body spray. PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. And it just keeps going. At first you think he’s spraying himself. Then you realize this man appears to be performing a commercial pest-control treatment on the entire locker room. He’s spraying his chest, his neck, his arms, his shirt, his back, possibly his shoes, maybe the locker, maybe the bench. At this point nobody knows. Brother, are you getting ready to leave the gym or are you treating the building for termites? Because we’ve seen professional exterminators use less product.
You half expect him to finish by pulling out a clipboard, putting a little sticker inside the locker, and writing “NEXT TREATMENT DUE: NOVEMBER.” Meanwhile, the rest of us are trapped inside the cloud trying to locate the nearest emergency exit while his phone continues blasting music at a volume normally associated with a DJ standing six feet from the speakers.
And here’s the truly amazing part: he appears completely unaware that any of this is happening. The music is shaking the lockers, the Axe cloud has reduced visibility to approximately four feet, three guys are coughing, somebody’s contact lenses have dissolved, and the fire alarm is considering getting involved. Macho Bro is calmly buttoning his shirt like this is an absolutely normal Tuesday morning.
We Need to Discuss the Application Process
We’re genuinely curious about what exactly is happening before you leave the house. Normal cologne usage goes something like this: spritz, maybe another spritz, done. But some of you appear to be preparing for the day like you’re pressure-washing a driveway. You spray the front, the back, under each arm, the shirt, and possibly several areas that were never contemplated by the fragrance manufacturer.
Then apparently you spray a giant cloud into the air and walk through it like you’re entering another dimension. You stop, think about it for a moment, and give yourself another twelve blasts just in case someone three counties away can’t smell you yet. Brother, we can smell you. NASA can smell you.
Cologne Is Supposed to Be Discovered, Not Announced
Here’s the entire secret to wearing fragrance: someone standing close to you should think, “Hey, he smells nice.” That’s it. They should not be sitting twenty feet away thinking, “Oh God, my eyes.” Cologne should be a pleasant little discovery. It should not function as an emergency broadcast system.
You should enter a room before your fragrance does, and your fragrance should leave the room approximately when you do. If you left the building twenty minutes ago and we’re still discussing you because your scent has become structurally integrated into the drywall, you wore too much.
Who Told You Women Want This?
This is the part we really need explained. Presumably the original objective was simple: smell good and hopefully become more attractive. Perfectly reasonable strategy. But somewhere along the way, the equation apparently became smell good Ă— 47 = irresistible sex machine. That’s not how fragrance works.
A little cologne can absolutely smell attractive. But there’s a point of diminishing returns. Then there’s another point where people begin opening windows. Then there’s a third point where the building’s ventilation system gets involved. And then there’s the point where you’re standing. If somebody can taste your cologne while you’re standing six feet away, you have not increased your sex appeal. You have become an environmental condition.
At that point, there should probably be a National Weather Service advisory describing you: “FRAGRANCE WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 9:00 PM. RESIDENTS WITH RESPIRATORY CONDITIONS SHOULD REMAIN INDOORS.” Your scent should not have a forecast.
Axe Body Spray Is Not Cooking Spray
This message also goes out to our brothers still rocking the aerosol body spray. Axe is not cooking spray. You don’t need complete coverage. You are not seasoning a cast-iron skillet, and the instructions are not “Apply continuously until the can becomes noticeably lighter.”
Spraying more also does not unlock additional levels of masculinity. One second smells fresh. Three seconds is noticeable. Five seconds is excessive. Eight seconds is nightclub bathroom. Twelve seconds is middle-school locker room. Twenty seconds means somebody should probably call the EPA. If you’re holding down the nozzle long enough to contemplate your future, you’ve gone too far.
Your Coworkers Are Being Polite
Here’s another possibility worth considering: nobody has told you. Your coworkers haven’t said anything. Your customers haven’t said anything. The cashier hasn’t said anything. The people in the elevator haven’t said anything. Therefore, you naturally conclude, “Everybody loves my cologne.”
No. Everybody is participating in the ancient social tradition known as not wanting to have an incredibly awkward conversation with a stranger about how he smells. They’re not necessarily thinking, “Wow, this man smells amazing.” Some of them are thinking, “Holy hell, did the bottle break in his pocket?” But nobody wants to say that out loud, so we’re saying it.
The Two-Spritz Challenge
Therefore, we would like to propose an experiment. Tomorrow morning, take your favorite cologne, spray it once, and then spray it again. Now comes the difficult part: put the bottle down. We understand this may feel unnatural. Your hand may tremble. Your brain may whisper, One more. Ignore it.
Walk away and experience the terrifying sensation of wondering whether people can smell you from across a parking lot. They cannot, and this is good. The person standing next to you might still notice that you smell nice, while the person standing next to them will remain completely unaware of your fragrance choice. This is how civilization is supposed to work.
Masculinity Does Not Require a Scent Radius
You don’t need to establish dominance over a room using fragrance. You don’t need every package you touch to become a scratch-and-sniff advertisement for your cologne. You don’t need customers to know you delivered their food without checking the app, and you definitely don’t need to leave behind a scent trail powerful enough for a bloodhound to reconstruct your entire afternoon.
Wear the nice shirt, style the hair, polish the boots, drive the truck, rock the sunglasses, and wear some cologne. Absolutely. Just remember that cologne is an accessory, not a force field. The ultimate macho move isn’t making everybody within 100 feet smell you. It’s having enough confidence to understand that two sprays are enough.
Your friends, Everybody With a Functioning Nose
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