Artificial fragrances are rampant in the celebrity perfume business. But why would you even want to smell like someone else in the first place?

I recently read a quote from Emma Watson: “I can’t understand this (celebrity) fragrance thing,” she told the British Press Association. “Why would you want to smell like somebody else? Don’t you want to smell like yourself?”

You know, Emma, I totally agree with you. Why not smell like yourself? Or better yet, why not smell like aromas that you are naturally attracted to, blended in a way that creates a unique signature scent for you? Being a one-of-a-kind is something I think you, Emma, would understand.

‘s because of the years I spent working alongside Horst Rechelbacher, the founder of Aveda and Intelligent Nutrients and a proponent of aromatherapy and pure essential oils, or maybe it’s because I have a very strong sense of smell. I like to think it’s because I appreciate uniqueness. But, like Emma, I don’t understand the appeal of celebrity fragrances.

Is another celebrity fragrance really necessary? There are hundreds of celebrity fragrances on the market. Britney Spears has at least 12 different perfumes. There are not enough days in the week for her to wear all of them. Every time a celebrity launches a fragrance or adds a new fragrance to their portfolio I have to roll my eyes and think “am I missing something?” Nothing personal, Britney, but even though I’ve done your makeup a few times, I don’t know you well enough to want to smell like you.

Each of us is so unique in our tastes (our personal likes and dislikes especially when it comes to scent) that even if you love the celebrity whose perfume you are purchasing, you may not be attracted to the same smells as they are. Remember too: what smells good on one person doesn’t always smell good on others. And commercially available fragrances are created with synthetic and artificial ingredients including chemicals boosters and fixatives that give the aroma a strong longer lasting effect.

Which brings me to another point: the majority of what you’re paying for when you dish out the $50 to $100+ dollars at the cash register is not what’s in the bottle. The largest percentage of your hard-earned money goes to pay for overhead costs, profits for the manufacturer and seller, marketing costs, and sales commissions. Next, you pay for the beautiful bottle specifically created for the perfume as well as additional packaging costs. Let’s not forget that celebrities are not lending their name to a product for free, either: celebrity endorsements or licensing costs you, the end consumer.

Believe it or not, one of the least expensive parts of a fragrance is the actual perfume or “juice” in the bottle. This is because even if the juice contains expensive ingredients they are used in such small quantities and mixed with other, mostly synthetic ingredients and artificial fragrances to create the final product. And here is the crazy thing: the FDA does not require fragrance manufacturers to disclose the ingredients of (synthetic) fragrances because these formulas are regarded as “proprietary” and are protected under the FDA’s “trade secret” law. And by the way, the chances of the celebrity whose name on the bottle is actually wearing the fragrance you are purchasing are pretty slim (unless of course they are at an event promoting the fragrance).

So, what’s the alternative?

A Purefume rather than Perfume (I heard the word purefume for the first time from Horst Rechelbacher): customized scents created with pure essential oils derived from plant materials that harmonize with, rather than mask, an individual’s unique scent.

According to Kelly Holland Azzaro, registered Aromatherapist and former President of NAHA (National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy) there are many reasons for using essential oils instead of perfumes and artificial fragrances:

-Essential oils are natural botanicals aromas not synthetic or chemical laden smells.

-Essential oils do more than just smell good they have therapeutic properties that affect your well being.

-Most essential oils also have antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral properties.

-Essential oils are not as invasive as artificial perfumes (which can cause health problems for those with upper respiratory issues and breathing difficulties or those hypersensitive to smells or chemicals).

-And for those that want a unique “purefume,” essential oils blend with a person’s individual smell, creating a very unique personal aroma. Can you say unforgettable?

Kelly advises that if you are not sure where to start, work with a professional aromatherapist who has been trained in the safe use of essential oils.

For the record, the word “fragrance” means a sweet or delicate odor. “Perfume” means a liquid substance that you put on your body in small amounts in order to smell pleasant; it can be created with either natural or synthetic ingredients. Only the words “essential oils” mean a substance obtained from a plant (ie from nature).

Here’s how to create a signature aroma using essential oils:

Margaret Fink, former Aveda Director of Education, advises that the best way to create a truly individual essential oil blend is to “go on a sensory journey”. Our olfactory system is linked to memory; you may find different smells even affect your mood and emotions. The best way to find what you love is to smell a variety of essential oils (singular notes as they are called) and identify the essences you are most attracted to. Once you’ve identified 3 to 4 scents (or notes) that affect you positively, they can be blended into a composition that is truly original “you bottled.” You can even decide to purchase the individual oils and mix or blend into additional mediums such as bath water, body lotion, and even be diffused into your environment. Layering your aroma makes it last longer without the addition of synthetic fixatives and boosters.

Don’t know where to start? Michelle Moulin Markuson, Aromatherapist and founder of Blending Babes, recommends sandalwood, cedar and rose as great aromas to transition into autumn. As a former Aveda alumni, Michelle started Blending Babes because she was done buying other companies’ scents. Michelle wanted to make essential oils, safe, easily available and affordable. Michelle’s company sells beautiful essential oils blends, hydrosols, and more on line.

Get sniffing and find a scent makes you feel like a celebrity.

Find Fatima on Twitter @fatimaolive 

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In case you missed the news, naked celebrity photos were recently stolen and leaked on the web, bringing with them scores of discussions, debates and even an art exhibition.

Aside from our monster junk food, monster house and monster car obsessions, Americans also have monster celebrity obsessions as well as some fairly unhealthy relationships with the naked body. We idolize both celebrities and nakedness for what they represent, rather than what they are. (Which is to say: they’re people and naked people, respectively.) So should we really be surprised by the insane amount of media attention that’s been given to this ‘news’?

It all got me wondering why we’re so fixated on people we don’t know, let alone why we clamor to see them naked. I get the whole seeing people naked for, you know, practical purposes, if you will. But the level of gawking people are doing at an undressed Jennifer Lawrence isn’t serving a utilitarian function like pornography (although I’m sure it has for some)—it’s mostly being approached in the neck-turning effect driving past car wrecks have on us. We simply want to see something incredible.

But why?

This whole scenario got me thinking about the time Bill Murray and I shared our spit. Yes, that Bill Murray, and no, we didn’t make out. He was shopping at a health food store about ten years ago when I was there for a South American tea company. The tea, yerba mate, is traditionally drunk out of a gourd from a metal straw (a bombilla). The gourd is filled and shared as a ritual, which we were attempting to emulate in this humble north Jersey strip mall, when from behind me I heard the store owner say, “Hey Bill, you have to try this stuff.” Mr. Murray wasn’t the stock boy I thought I’d see when I turned around, and the shock and awe hit me hard, making my job to explain what I was handing over to one of my all-time favorite actors and asking him to sip, quite the task. As all this was registering in my head in super slow-motion, Bill Murray did what only he can do so well—he filled the awkward void with his even more awkward humor, asking me silly questions like ‘will I die if I drink the stuff?”.

Eventually I sort of mostly got my heartbeat down to a manageable thumping and was actually able to converse with Bill Murray about the reported benefits of the tea. He was clearly curious. After all, he was in a health food store looking for healthy products. And while I may have been able to share some information with him that impacted his life for the better, it was the lesson he shared with me that I’m reminded of anytime the media encourages us to go extra ga-ga over celebrities and idolize them in these unhealthy spectacles. It may sound so simple, but it seems we need reminded that celebrities are people too. Sometimes they’re just looking for a healthy energy drink. Sometimes they snap naked pictures of themselves on an iPhone. (And really, can you blame them? If I had a body like Rihanna, I would probably want to see it from all angles too.)

Which brings us to the issue of our strangeness over nakedness. The irony here of course is that some of these celebs have been next to naked in public, in films or videos. It’s not hard to imagine the rest, is it? But that’s not why we freak out over these photos. We freak out over the candidness, and the naughtiness of something we know we’re not supposed to see. We’re blindsided by the reality that these celebrities, are in fact, actually just sitting around being bored people who get tempted by the same iPhone camera opp as any of us.

Chuck Klosterman once wrote that television has turned us all into voyeurs. It’s a valid point. We spend countless hours each week just watching other people do mundane things. It turns us on in ways we’re largely unaware of, or unwilling to admit. We watch others, whether it’s in a pornographic setting or a romantic sitcom, to give our own lives perspective. We unravel a bit of ourselves in observing how we’re similar and different to other people, what we like or don’t like. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that setup. But idolization brings with it a slew of problems. Rewind thousands of years to the stories of deities that ruled cultures across the globe (and still do) and you can glimpse into the overwhelming power these people we elevate above our own lives has on society—and just how dangerous that can be.

What’s really dangerous today is that we let our celeb-obsession turn unhealthy in new ways. We’re encouraged to, in fact. Girls starve themselves to look like their heroes and boys wield weapons to emulate theirs. Multi-billion fashion and beauty industries prey on our insecurities and desires and we buy into them, no matter the cost. In today’s world you either have to be a celebrity, or work damn hard to look like one for your next Facebook selfie. That we now have these little slivers of fans in our own social networks gives even more fuel to our celebrity obsession.

And of course, the more distracted we are with celebrities, clothed or naked, the less time we have to inspect the real news of the day, the things that may outrage, inspire and motivate us to become more active and involved in ushering in real change on this planet.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t enjoy celebrities. We absolutely should enjoy them. They’re talented, beautiful, inspiring. But can we enjoy them more in the same ways we enjoy videos of puppies and kittens (who, by the way, are almost always also naked) than in our dehumanizing obsession of naked celebrity photos? What if we all take off our clothes and take naked selfies, whether we look like J-Law or not and then share them on the Internet? Maybe that will even the playing field. It will at least make things more interesting.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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images:  TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ (top),  paul sherwood

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This week’s Link Love it’s World Environment Day and Nepal is setting the treehugging record. Cheap wine can be good wine. Yoga pants are the new blue jeans? Rihanna’s too sexy for the UK and everything you need to know about French style!

Nepal aims to set world record for tree hugging on World Environment Day [via the Indian Express]

How to buy good, cheap wine. [via Eat Drink Better]

Are yoga pants threatening the American tradition of denim? [via Well+Good]

Rihanna’s perfume ad banned in the United Kingdom for sultry, nearly nude pose. [via NY Daily News]

Style secrets of the French. [via Elle]

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ColumnRecent Twittersphere flare-ups featuring Rashida Jones and Sinéad O’Conner “slut-shaming” pop-culture irritant Miley Cyrus and others for their fleshy outbursts drew swift backlash from some members of the feminist community and bitter online battles among women. What’s a man to make of all this?

Growing up in a liberal family in the ‘70s got me thinking. I cheered as Billie Jean King thrashed Bobby Riggs on the tennis court, watched in awe as millions jammed Washington to protest anti-women legislation and celebrated the Roe v. Wade triumph. I loved my mother that much more for proudly wearing her ERA bracelet (serendipitous though it was, as those also happened to be her initials) and followed her example when it came to developing my worldview regarding women and politics. All told, my support for feminism was indelibly engrained as far back as I can remember.

As an undergraduate, I read Andrea Dworkin and Betty Friedan, marched in “take back the night” campaigns and volunteered as a campus escort. It wasn’t front and center in my life, but I did my best to keep my testosterone in check in my relationships and outlook, and play by the rules as I saw them regarding the movement and its tenets, and their implications for my thinking and lifestyle.

To be clear, while I called myself a feminist (and still do), I look back with no illusions that my insensitivities didn’t lead to plenty of bad behaviors. I was guilty of my share of objectification (still am), and my ignorance and lack of empathy reared their heads on too many occasions. Yet, by and large, I embraced (accepted, I should say) the vilification of such shortcomings. I even tried to understand how someone could see my penis as a weapon.

Of course, it wasn’t always easy staying oriented in this sociopolitical context. One example of weird crossfire was in my studies. I was a lit guy, more or less, and clearly remember the icy stare of the prof who refused to read my thesis on Kerouac because the writer was a “pig.” Another one threw (as in slammed) a copy of Homer’s Odyssey to the floor during class, saying the work was “full of male crap” and that the canon was “rigged.” As the editor of a campus literary magazine, I witnessed and was dragged into numerous battles between the sexes—and I didn’t dare publish any of my own erotica as I was sure my take was poisoned by my pen (or sword, as it were).

Most of this kind of thing was anecdotal to my experience, not pervasive, and all told I manned up and surfed the Second Wave as best I could, learning life lessons along the way. But as the end of the century drew nearer, things began to change. The Feminist Sex Wars heated up, Madonna showed up as the anti-virgin and Chrissie Hynde began shooting her mouth off. The feminist tent grew bigger and the women I knew were no longer playing by the hard and fast rules I grew up with, as liberation took on a new, more inclusive and individualized sensibility. Relations between the sexes were suddenly less clear and, just as my fathers before me must have struggled to keep pace with change, I found myself tripping and bumbling and trying to understand, rethink and act accordingly.

The questions came fast: What, exactly, did all these changes mean and what, exactly, was becoming “okay” in this shifting paradigm? Could I flip on the porn? Did I dare admit that I secretly thought objectification was at times underrated? And why is that chick hitting on me? Does her T-shirt really say that? Did she just say that?! Part of me, of course, was delighted by this turn of events. Another part, seasoned in old-school sexual politics, had no idea what to do. Understandable, I guess, when seeing the world through the eyes of what is or isn’t politically correct.

To the “it’s a not about you” voices out there, fair enough, but I should say that it’s not just the fact that I’m a guy that made me attempt to see this evolution through my own lens. It’s human nature to ask what does this mean to me, particularly when it’s not about you and in many ways empathy cannot be part of the equation. Besides, I had women friends and lovers, and processing how those relationships were affected by such changes was at the very least polite, and at best simply the right thing to do.

This is now…

Today, Third-Wave Feminism has come of age (with a fourth purportedly taking shape), and it’s largely credited with invigorating and in many ways saving the movement. In terms of sexual expression, the footprint is everywhere—from the Suicide Girls to Yes Means Yes, there are countless articulations of the sex-positive moment. Just the other week, in fact, a woman friend and I were discussing how the word cunt is being happily retrieved for delightful usage by many of its owners. On the (more) popular front, we have Miley Cyrus merrily swinging along on her wrecking ball (spoiler: bad art alert), and Rihanna crooning, “come here rude boy/boy can you get it up?”

Not everyone is of the same mind though, as evidenced by recent online flames when Rashida Jones and Sinéad O’Conner weighed in negatively on Miley et al. Watching the slut-shaming and “what is feminism?” debate erupt, I thought about how much the world has changed since I was young—and about all those old struggles on the okay vs. not okay front. To her credit, Jones, addressing the issue in a Glamour article, asked men to weigh in: “Men: WHERE ARE YOU??? Please talk to us about how all this makes you feel. You are 49 percent of the population; don’t sit around and let women beat one another up while you intermittently and guiltily enjoy the show. Speak up! We care what you think!”

So okay, Rashida, here it goes:

Looking back, many of the questions I used to ask myself about how to react to women (and female expression) were off the mark. The fact of the matter is that too often we see the world and our fellow inhabitants through a social or political lens, leaving out one critical fact—people are people first, and men, women and the trans community are each a subset of that. Forget the relationship with the movement—we’re at our best when we treat humans with humanity, not when we try to define, limit and sometimes even understand others.

What does this mean? Well, call it trial and error, but I’ve come to realize that my most successful relationships—and best behaviors—happen when I drop the perceived definitions and flailing, biased judgments. Not to diminish my own, personal politics (to which I remain deeply committed), but what was most important about how I was raised was not how to be a feminist, but rather why to be feminist. Compassion and respect come first, said and modeled my mother. It’s not about gender—and being politically correct isn’t the core issue. The real question we must ask ourselves is, are we humane? To my boys (now interesting and respectable men), my mantra was always “be nice to everyone you meet and watch out for cars.” Be kind and be safe. That’s really all you need to know—at least that’s where it’s best to begin.

So, Rashida, what do I think? Well, my penchant for naked aside, I think Miley pretty much sucks. (Let’s just say her work is not to my taste.) Rihanna’s talent is, in a word, overwhelming (and Chris Brown is a criminal), and you, Rashida, are a brilliant actress. Sinead? Two things: that voice changed me back in the day and, sorry, but she turned me on something fierce. As for how each of you influence our culture—and younger women in particular—I’ll just say keep doing what you think is best. Your audiences (and perhaps their parents) can take it from there.

In the end it’s on us men to check ourselves, not on women to censor how they express themselves. I recently saw a powerful photograph of an attractive topless woman at a protest event with this scrawled across her naked breasts: “It’s still not okay to rape me.” I admit that I lingered over the image for a few extra seconds for prurient reasons, but what truly resonated for me is the truth of those words. And how, person-to-person feminism aside, and no matter what we believe about anything else in this world, she’s right. And that’s all we really need to know—or at least that’s where it’s best to begin.

Scott Adelson is EcoSalon’s Senior Editor of HyperKulture, a monthly column that explores opening cultural doors to initiate personal change. He is also the author of InPRINT, which reviews and discusses books, new and old. You can reach him at scott at adelson dot org and follow him @scottadelson on Twitter.

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Images: PNG etc (top) and PeterTea

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Stella McCartney opens new boutique at Saks in New York City with fellow rocker child Liv Tyler in tow.

The recent launch of Stella McCartney’s new boutique at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City has everyone buzzing, and not just because two daughters from famous iconic rockers were in the same room at the same time. Refinery 29 says, “Hot off the heels of chairing the Met Gala, McCartney also presented some of the drop-dead gorgeous dresses worn on Monday, like Rihanna’s sheer-sided, lacy number and Gwyneth Paltrow’s diamond-encrusted, open-back dress.”

Party goers were able to peruse the debut of McCartney’s newest collection that benefited the Naked Heart Foundation, an organization that provides safe playgrounds for children in urban Russia, as well as ogle the Met Gala looks.

Met Gala dresses at McCartney’s boutique launch (Refinery 29 image).

In celebration of the vegan designer’s new boutique, we thought we’d pull some of our favorite looks from Saks’ collection.

Available now at Saks:

Citrus Print Silk Top, $935.00

Open Weave Crepe Sweater, $695.00

Silk Satin Tamarind Dress, $1,285.00

Available for pre-order:

Fern Print Silk Dress, $1,235.00

Edna Wool Twill, $1,365.00

Hexagon Print Dress, $1,235.00

Top Image: Just Jared

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