WOMAN AS DRAGON

“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 Woman as Dragon:

“The archaic mother – the mother who reproduces without male permission for her own satisfaction – is the least human of the female monsters because she poses the most profound existential threat… The Mother is female bodily self-determination, full-fledged and uncontrollable, out of the ocean and stomping skyscrapers, turning the male world to rubble. She is what happens when the Furies come home.”

A fiery red musk with crushed ginger root, black upturned soil, dragon’s blood resin, clove bud, pink peppercorn, tobacco absolute, red amber, patchouli, black oud, blood-caked tar, vetiver, and cedar.