difference is gender-based. Since genes can be altered in the womb by elements of the outside world, even a genetic difference isn't always nature-driven—that is, determined more by gender than other factors. Boys are stronger than girls. This is a biological fact. Are boys smarter than girls? This is a minefield. But the same brain research that is pointing us toward a negative answer (no, they're not) is behind current thinking on smell: girls are better smellers. Not born better, but primed to want to be better at it and thus more inclined to learn. I'm not talking about conscious learning, as in a classroom, but conditioning that comes from experience and gender roles.
Why was I so aware of the smells now missing from my house, many of which I'd noticed only vaguely when I could smell? Would my husband have had the same heightened awareness of smell's absence if this had happened to him? No. I doubted that he would have gone into as deep a funk as I had, nor would he have been so keen to deconstruct smell (as if that would bring it back). He would have acted like a man, sucked it up, and moved on.
This fact struck me as the key to my original question: are women better smellers than men? Only to the extent that they have evolved to perform gender-specific functions that seem to be part of their DNA because of adaptation. Unhelpful genetic traits are extinguished by the death of the individual burdened with them. Helpful traits live on. In the latter category in humans is a nose that is highly impressionable and easily trained. Then life experience takes over.
Such thoughts occupied me as I cleaned. I was keeping a tight rein on thinking. Keep it simple. Logical. Focused. I am a classic random personality, eager to chase every capricious notion that enters my brain. This habit of thought (and behavior) is why my house is usually a mess.
We'll have none of that,
my inner Nurse Ratched scolded as my thoughts wandered. She was the polar opposite of smell. Cold, practical, and as sensitive as a post.
I'd lived a third of my life in this house. I considered it part of my DNA. Or maybe I should say my family's DNA, seeing as how I was the fourth generation to live here and the house hadn't changed much since it was built. The wing chair smelled of me and Mel and a thousand meals enjoyed before a thousand fires and whatever else I'd contributed to the second skin it had acquired since my husband and I moved in. We'd had it reupholstered and the springs fixed fifteen years ago. The heavy fabric that replaced my grandmother's pastel chintz gave the room an earthier, more masculine feel that also disguised the fact that we don't have live-in maids as she did. All the chairs were going to see more wear living with us than they had in three generations with my ancestors. The wing chair would acquire the slightly oily aroma of cat hair hiding under the dilapidated cushion, which was now as limp as a flat tire. It also held the aroma of Sweetie, the black standard poodle we'd bought as a puppy for the girls; thirteen years later, she reeked of cancer and could barely get up into the chair she used to leap into with the grace of a fawn and loved to lounge in with her long black paws hanging over the edge of the cushion like a pair of slender silk tassels, her long elegant nose resting daintily on the soiled arm.
All these moments would soon be imprisoned in their fabric cage, their smells locked away in the limbic system. I closed my eyes, determined to resurrect others before they too disappeared without my saying a proper goodbye. The chair captured and held them, an eyewitness, though its clues could not be deciphered through vision. Only through smell. The curtains and the drab pea-green carpet grabbed the smells too: compost and the crisp fall leaves and bits of grass that stowed away in dog and cat fur and came into the house through the rubber flap of the small opening in the side door that I'd cut out years ago with a
Why was I so aware of the smells now missing from my house, many of which I'd noticed only vaguely when I could smell? Would my husband have had the same heightened awareness of smell's absence if this had happened to him? No. I doubted that he would have gone into as deep a funk as I had, nor would he have been so keen to deconstruct smell (as if that would bring it back). He would have acted like a man, sucked it up, and moved on.
This fact struck me as the key to my original question: are women better smellers than men? Only to the extent that they have evolved to perform gender-specific functions that seem to be part of their DNA because of adaptation. Unhelpful genetic traits are extinguished by the death of the individual burdened with them. Helpful traits live on. In the latter category in humans is a nose that is highly impressionable and easily trained. Then life experience takes over.
Such thoughts occupied me as I cleaned. I was keeping a tight rein on thinking. Keep it simple. Logical. Focused. I am a classic random personality, eager to chase every capricious notion that enters my brain. This habit of thought (and behavior) is why my house is usually a mess.
We'll have none of that,
my inner Nurse Ratched scolded as my thoughts wandered. She was the polar opposite of smell. Cold, practical, and as sensitive as a post.
I'd lived a third of my life in this house. I considered it part of my DNA. Or maybe I should say my family's DNA, seeing as how I was the fourth generation to live here and the house hadn't changed much since it was built. The wing chair smelled of me and Mel and a thousand meals enjoyed before a thousand fires and whatever else I'd contributed to the second skin it had acquired since my husband and I moved in. We'd had it reupholstered and the springs fixed fifteen years ago. The heavy fabric that replaced my grandmother's pastel chintz gave the room an earthier, more masculine feel that also disguised the fact that we don't have live-in maids as she did. All the chairs were going to see more wear living with us than they had in three generations with my ancestors. The wing chair would acquire the slightly oily aroma of cat hair hiding under the dilapidated cushion, which was now as limp as a flat tire. It also held the aroma of Sweetie, the black standard poodle we'd bought as a puppy for the girls; thirteen years later, she reeked of cancer and could barely get up into the chair she used to leap into with the grace of a fawn and loved to lounge in with her long black paws hanging over the edge of the cushion like a pair of slender silk tassels, her long elegant nose resting daintily on the soiled arm.
All these moments would soon be imprisoned in their fabric cage, their smells locked away in the limbic system. I closed my eyes, determined to resurrect others before they too disappeared without my saying a proper goodbye. The chair captured and held them, an eyewitness, though its clues could not be deciphered through vision. Only through smell. The curtains and the drab pea-green carpet grabbed the smells too: compost and the crisp fall leaves and bits of grass that stowed away in dog and cat fur and came into the house through the rubber flap of the small opening in the side door that I'd cut out years ago with a
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