Back in November, I finally wrapped up my Ph D after three and a half years of hard work and research. Feeling proud, I shared a picture on X holding my printed thesis to celebrate with my academic friends. To my surprise, the post got 120 million views and stirred up quite a bit of backlash-mostly because of the title: Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose.
The title sparked criticism from folks who totally misunderstood what the research was about. “Smells are racist,” became this incorrect catchphrase online. One person even said it was a study about “why it’s racist and/or classist to not like it when people exhibit body odors consistent with poor hygiene.”
What I actually explore in my thesis is how some writers over the last hundred years have used smell in their stories to highlight social tensions like prejudice and exploitation. It also ties these literary examples back to how we think about smell’s role in real life.
Take George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1936), for example. He says that “the real secret of class distinctions in the West” boils down to one harsh truth: “The lower classes smell.” Orwell goes on to explain why this kind of stereotype is damaging and how we might challenge it.
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It’s well known that smell has been used as an excuse for racism, classism, and sexism. Since the 1980s, researchers have looked into the ethical issues connected to how people perceive smells and stereotypes around them.
My thesis builds on this by looking at certain books and movies where smell really matters. In all these works, smell isn’t just about sensing something; it plays a bigger role.
I include famous authors like George Orwell, Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Coetzee, Toni Morrison-and also newer examples such as Bong Joon-ho’s film Parasite.
I argue that often smell is tied closely to identity-used to say something about someone’s value or social standing. In Parasite, for instance, there’s a scene where a working-class man overhears his boss saying his “smell crosses the line,” which Bong Joon-ho describes as “the basic respect you have for another human being is being shattered.”
Some writers tap into long-standing discrimination linked to smell to show why it still matters today. For instance, during the transatlantic slave trade era, Black slaves were wrongly thought to give off bad smells-a myth that helped dehumanize them.
Toni Morrison’s novel Tar Baby (1981), set in modern times, reflects this when one character tells a Black woman protagonist: “I know you’re an animal because I smell you.”
I’ve noticed that changing these ideas-that certain smells belong with certain groups-is really tough because smell triggers such strong emotional reactions.
We usually think avoiding bad smells is just instinctive protection but studies show we actually learn which smells disgust us since kids under two don’t really react with disgust at all. So society shapes how we sense smell-and all its biases come along too.
I also argue that reading literature focused on smell helps people understand their own senses better while thinking critically about these issues.
For example, Sam Byers’ novel Come Join Our Disease (2021) features characters who openly accept bad odors and highlight there’s nothing wrong with that.
This shows books and films don’t just talk about political sides of smell-they can help us rethink our own sense of it too.
A lot of people didn’t believe at first that smelling could be worth studying academically-which just shows how much we overlook this sense. But honestly, smelling is one of our main ways we interact with everything around us-so it deserves more attention than it gets.
