Summer 1976. That was the year of the American Bicentennial and the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. That was the year “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” was at the top of the charts, and I turned 16. That was the year my sister and I got to escape the heat wave in the U.K. and spend two weeks with our Auntie Pauline on Cape Cod.
That was also, crucially, the year I discovered a hair product called Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific. I vividly remember unscrewing the cap off its fuchsia bottle in the South Wellfleet General Store and inhaling that heady mix of musk and bubble gum.
If, say, Patrick Süskind, the author of Perfume, ever wanted to know what popularity smelled of, then this, back then, was it. Can a smell change the course of a person’s life? Who knows? But if I hadn’t bought a bottle to keep on my bureau back home in London, I might never have made my parents send me to college in the United States. Or ended up staying there for the next 12 years.
Launched in 1974 by Jergens and instantly identified by its cheesy name and childish rainbow font—not to mention its peppery, Play-Doh–ish scent—the cult shampoo brand must have been revolutionary for its time. What other formula doubled up as a fragrance? And who else managed to conflate chastity and seduction with such verve?
Then there was its advertising campaign, in which a guy sidles up behind a girl in an elevator or from out of the library stacks and sniffs the back of her neck. A little too Ted Bundy (remember him?) for contemporary audiences, but back then it was just savvy marketing. It would go on to be parodied by Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons.
Oh, if only I could cop just one quick whiff, it would bring it all rushing back. The sense of possibility it promised, the olfactory window it provided out of my real life back in dreary London, where showers didn’t exist (this is a bathtub city) and washing one’s hair involved attaching rubber tubing to the faucets of the kitchen sink.
For me, G.Y.H.S.T. encapsulated everything that was great about America, with its cheerleaders and frat boys and long, uninterrupted car seats. To me, it stank of American Graffiti, Carrie (the original, mind), and my favorite-ever American TV show, The Partridge Family, all rolled into one. It cannot be confirmed whether David Cassidy only dated girls who used it—if you, by chance, have an old issue of Tiger Beat, please contact me—but that sounds about right. To me, G.Y.H.S.T. was Eau de Susan Dey (Cassidy’s “sister” on the show).
Tragically, the brand was discontinued in the mid-80s in the U.S. (fueling rumors it contained real deer musk), and its license was sold to the Vibelle Manufacturing Corporation, in the Philippines. That, too, was discontinued, and now the genuine stuff (as opposed to paltry, updated versions that mimic the original) is nowhere to be found, not even in the deepest, darkest corners of Etsy.
My 21-year-old Californian daughter-in-law, who has never smelled it and insists on calling it “Gosh Your Hair Smells Nice,” claims to have found a copycat scent. I’m curious to see if it matches up. But I don’t have very high hopes.
In the interim, I am informally campaigning for its return. If you are reading this, either Bongbong Marcos or the Andrew Jergens Company, might you help me make that happen?
Christa D’Souza is a London-based writer who contributes to The Guardian, the Daily Mail, and The Sunday Times