
Bathandbodyworks.com
Foam for fellas: Bath & Body Works' line of anti-bacterial gentle foaming hand soaps for men.
By Alex Smith
What exactly is it with women and soap? Put some of the stuff — soap, skin moisturizer, lotion, hand cream, exfoliating product or any other similarly inclined goop — into a pretty tube or bottle and show it to my wife and she lights up and coos like a doe-eyed newborn. For myself — and like most men, I'd wager — it's not that I'm averse to smelling nice (to say nothing of being clean), but it really isn't that complicated. For most guys like me, it's usually just a matter of using whatever is on hand, even if it's just a humble, generic bar prized from one's local truck stop. If it gets the job done, huzzah. Just don't ask me to get excited about it.
As a senior editor at TODAY.com, however, I work with what some might consider an inordinate amount of women, and my indifference to the allure of specialty soaps is thus often expressed and well-documented. As such, when our style and beauty editor plunked down three bottles of Bath & Body Works' "signature collection" of anti-bacterial gentle foaming hand soap for men on my desk, I was naturally skeptical. But still, I was curious. What exactly sets hand soap for men apart? I volunteered to take the three sleek bottles, which sell for $5.50 each, home and give them a try.
My first foray into this new realm involved a quick squirt from the first bottle, "Twilight Woods." Already suspicious of the connotations, given the teenage-vampire-alluding name, I dutifully lathered up. While purportedly "lightly scented with juicy berry, soft mimosa, apricot nectar and warm woods," I found the bold aroma of the soap almost overpowering. It didn't feel like I was washing my hands so much as coating them in fragrance. It's not that the smell was unpleasant, per se, but rather that it was invasive to the point that I felt compelled to wash it off.
As if on cue, there was my second bottle, "Noir." Presumably designed to cater to my self-styled, shadowy masculine mystique, I spread the foamy mix of "sage, coriander, cardamom, white vanilla, vetiver and amber musk" around my palms, expecting ... well, to be honest, I'm not sure what I was expecting from a hand soap called "Noir," given that dark and sepulchral aren't adjectives one normally associates with hygiene. The end results didn't so much remind me of a gritty Raymond Chandler novel or a Nine Inch Nails album so much as a musky bowl of potpourri. Even stronger than "Twilight Woods," "Noir" had a perfumey quality that was inescapable.
At this stage of the experiment, I cheated and went back to my generic, white bar of hand soap for a while, seduced by its purifying (if slightly industrial) simplicity. It may have lacked the olfactory complexities of "Twilight Woods" and "Noir," but isn't that what you want from a hand soap? Simplicity?
Then it happened. One of my kids left the top off a tube of toothpaste, and I suddenly found my hands coated in the viscous stuff. Instead of grasping that bar of soap, I turned my attention to the third bottle, that being the promising blueness of "Ocean." As I reached for it, I imagined a cleansing experience that captured all the crispness and depth such a moniker suggests. "Ocean," however, smelled like no ocean I'd ever swum in, although its robust scent of "cypress, vetiver and yuzu" (and what, pray, tell, is yuzu?) did indeed seem to possess the strength of a tidal surge. Once again, I felt that this heavily scented soap did more to camouflage than to actually clean, and I came away from it feeling like I was sporting a weighty cologne.
I can't help thinking that Bath & Body Works has the best of intentions with these products, and amplifies certain aspects of "Twilight Woods," "Noir" and "Ocean" to mirror the assertive nature of the idealized man. And it's not that they smell bad, once again, but rather that they lack any semblance of nuance, even when used sparingly. Perhaps finesse is inherently a female trait? Obviously, men come in all shapes, sizes and sensibilities, so perhaps my own hygienic habits are not indicative of the rest of my kind, but these soaps have left me asking whether hand soaps really need to sub-divided by gender-appeal, and if so, does a man's hand-soap need to cater to such stereotypes?
What do you look for in a hand soap?
Alex Smith is a senior editor at TODAY.com who has very clean, presentable hands.
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