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As far as exposes of the perfume industry go, this one is amongst the more worrying. Seeing children being forced into hardship by a so-called luxury business is always upsetting, but in this case, the situation is especially heart-breaking. The little girl at the centre of the story, Basmalla, is shown to be suffering from eye problems as a result of spending extended periods of time amongst the jasmine plants. She says that when she grows up, she’d like to be a doctor. It’s almost too cruel to think that she might not even have her vision intact before reaching adulthood — all for the sake of a scented spritz.
A few days ago, the BBC released a documentary entitled Perfume’s Dark Secret (reporter: Natasha Cox) which depicts extremely young children picking jasmine for the fragrance industry in the middle of the night in fields in northern Egypt. For my thoughts on the film, please click on this link to my Substack: BBC Perfume’s Dark Secret review. The post is free to read.
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Thanks for posting this, and for your well-considered comments. This discussion ought to be out in the open. Here’s in article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on child labour in rose harvesting. Written in German of course, but easily translated online: https://www.nzz.ch/nzz-am-sonntag/in-der-tuerkei-arbeiten-kinder-auf-rosenfeldern-fuer-die-parfumproduktion-ld.1772020
Not only perfume, but the cosmetics industry as a whole, needs to face up to the pervasive problem of child labour. Vanilla, palm oil, shea butter fare no better: https://www.worldvision.ch/fileadmin/downloads/Publikationen/Child_labour_in_global_cosmetics_WV_2023.pdf
Sebastian, many thanks for these links. Thanks also for reading.
I found the perfume’s dark secret blog extremely interesting and very well written. I felt very moved after reading your opinion on things. The most impactful quote was ”human nature tends to turn a blind eye on painful truths when greed is whispering in its ear.” It is scary how accurate that is, especially in our capitalistic cultures.
Yes, it is scary, but I suspect it’s always been true — not just in current times.
Thanks very much for reading.