Scentzilla!

Schadenfreude: I find it hard to resist. Consequently I obtained a small sample of Baby Phat Goddess, the fragrance from Kimora Lee Simmon’s fashion line, this weekend.

I didn’t approach this fragrance with an open mind for a number of reasons:

• The name, criminy, the name. “Baby Phat” aside, “Goddess” is a term I personally find extremely off-putting. Within the parlance of American vernacular, it’s a word women use to patronize other women. The colloquial usage is well-meaning but deeply misguided. To illustrate, a while back a young lady that I’m guessing was about sixteen years old came to my door to fundraise for her school. While there, she saw my kids running around the living room and chippered, “Oh you’re a mom! Right on, goddess!” She was wearing a t-shirt logo’ed with a gigantic pink Playboy magazine bunny. Sigh. Maybe I’m getting old and cantakerous before my time, and *I* am the one who doesn’t get it, but I have my doubts. Imagine men condescending to one another by casually referring to themselves as “gods.” We’d think they were behaving pompously or jockularly (spelling intended) snide.
• I enjoy the Baby Phat design aesthetic only for the unintentional comedy. To wit, look upon these shoes, which make the fashion statement of “do NOT eat the green acid!” Or glance upon the Cowl Gaucho Jumpsuit, designed only for the purpose of humiliating every body type in existence. Take a peek at this ensemble that I can’t describe due to a lack of knowing where oh where to begin with it. I tried my Goddess sample with the tasteless glory of the line already in mind.
• The addition of “bling” in the form of a ring that sits around the bottle’s neck is laughable juvenilia. Can we please be done with the phenomenon known as bling now? Pretty please? You know who else likes shiny things? Ostriches and small children. Moreover, including a prize trinket with the perfume strikes me as a Happy Meal approach. It infantilizes the packaging, which contrasts markedly from the “goddess” theme it strives for in name.

So what of the juice? Well, I can think of worse things to smell on another person. Goddess is objectless, and roundly bores me. A distinctionless fruit and white floral mix, with touches of pink pepper (which, I think just about everyone and their dog is using these days) that all dries down into musks which were clearly chosen for their bleached and inoffensive qualities. Goddess would have been forgettable had I not thought to take notes. The above description is the sum total of those notes. It’s thankfully not a tacky fragrance, but it dulls by being dreadfully anticlimactic. Hmm, very much like a Happy Meal, in fact, which always sound more fun than they really are. Is this what commerical perfumery will come to? McFragrances for a Happy Meal culture? Let us hope not.

No images or sounds could properly convey my reaction to Baby Phat Goddess aside from those of the clothing line itself, so there’s just a long-winded commentary today.