DEAD BLONDE “Women have always been monsters… But a monster is not something to dismiss, or look down on.” To mark the anniversary of Jude Ellison S. Doyle’s 2019 book DEAD BLONDES AND BAD MOTHERS: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power [originally published as Sady Doyle, book available here], BPAL is proud to present a new collection of perfume blends inspired by this brilliant work of nonfiction. DEAD BLONDES digs into the meaty places where pop-culture, history, and folklore overlap, presenting a series of monstrous feminine archetypes which perpetually recur in storytelling – including the stories we construct around current events, or events in our own lives. Each archetype comments differently on the roles that women and femmes have been relegated to throughout society; many of these have been reclaimed and turned inside out over time, evolving from punishments into sources of power. “This is a dark book, but some things are clearer in the darkness. This is a violent book, but an unsparing confrontation with violence can bring us to what lies beneath and beyond it.” From Dead Blonde: “Of course young women enjoy slashers. Adolescent girls have spent their lives absorbing our cultural disgust for womanhood, only to find themselves thrust into the middle of it, suddenly the butt of every joke. Their underlying anxieties are hit with a toxic sludge of predatory attention, sexual objectification, and impossible standards, growing to fifty times their natural size. It is not easy to become a monster. It is not fun to slip – suddenly and for the rest of your life – out of humanity and into womanhood. Girls are left reckoning with the fact that their social status, their human value, even their basic survival, are all suddenly contingent on men. Thus, at the exact moment they’re beginning to have sex and enter romantic relationships, girls watch stories in which a moment’s lapse in judgment, or a single instance of giving in to temptation, results and agony and annihilation – not because that’s what they want, but because it’s already happening, and they have precious few other ways to process it.” A wilting corsage of tea roses and white roses, bearing forensic traces of honeyed lip gloss and coconut oil suntan lotion.
