ABSTRACT
Smells are difficult to localise, hard to contain and have the character of flux and transitoriness. If this is the case, then some interesting affinities appear between the character of smells and queer theory's suspicion of fixed categories. If smell is indeed the sense of the postmodern, then perhaps it also reflects something of the character of late-capitalism, the historical, social and economic juncture that has produced postmodern and queer theories. In some advertisements for scents decidedly queer things can happen. The scents supplement the gender of heterosexual men and women and awaken or reinforce their desirability for each other is one that raises some troubling questions for a heteronormative model of desire. In the case of INTENSE, Possess and Nude, all homonormative scents, desire is also essentialised and enhanced within the same sex and gender. The unisex scents elicit desire that can be both between and within sexes and genders.
