Odorono -No!
Friday, October 19, 2018
Knowing
more than one language can confuse and even despistar (a fine word in Spanish
that sort of means “you don’t get it because you strayed from your course”.
This is why
in my youth in Buenos Aires when I heard on the radio (and later on in Mexico
on TV) the word odorono I never heard it in English as Odor No! but as some
made-up name pronounced as the Japanese would say it (Spanish and Japanese share
an alphabet of only five vowels pronounce in only one way). Odorono simply
sounded like Yoko Ono and would rhyme it.
Now in 2018
as my Rosemary and I watch CNN or MSNBC around 6 in the evening I wonder what
happened to the underarm deodorant ads as well as those for toothpaste,
detergent and toilet paper. The ads are all about diseases that afflict the
elderly (like us) plus something called Peyronie's Disease which afflicts men
and makes their erect penis curved.
According
to Rosemary at our age we don’t have to wear underarm deodorant or
antiperspirants. She says we smell less. She also tells me that our fingernails
and toenails grow more quickly. In my new diplomatic stage of my life I do not
counter with how rapid nose hair and ear hair growth in men afflicts me, too.
All that is
a prelude to justify me placing here a devastatingly beautiful photograph (a
scan of the individual 6x7cm exposure from my contact sheet). See here for what
a contact sheet is.
Sometime in the mid-80s I purchased a book (published in 1979) of a yet unknown model who had posed in the nude who happened to be called Madonna. The shock to many who saw the book was that the photographs featured Madonna with lots of very black underarm hair.
When I took this photograph of Caroline in 1989 for a series of photographs of women in a tub (all shot from above and not showing too many bits) my Rosemary was shocked. She told me, “You are not going to use that photograph of her with her underarm hair are you?”
I attempted to inform her that underarm hair in women was simply a tradition of the 20th century not to show it. I explained that in Mexico women who have some Spanish blood are proud of their body hair and some don’t shave their legs. I believe that Frida Kahlo did not shave her moustache for the same reason. She wanted to assert her mixed blood.
Now I don’t think my photograph is all that shocking anymore. I just wish there were fewer ads about A1C levels with fewer American Fire chiefs advertising how happy they are and perhaps some nice tasteful ads about underarm deodorant.
