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Attending Your First Contra Dance in a Fragrance-Compliant Manner

by jefftk
21st Oct 2025
jefftk
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Attending Your First Contra Dance in a Fragrance-Compliant Manner
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I appreciate that this particular issue is one you have to grapple with personally, but it is of a type that I come across nearly daily and I think it's probably a better use of our time to try to establish a better common understanding of the balance between what is said and what is meant than to advocate fully detailed policies for every social interaction.

Two examples from my life:

  1. A doctor's office with a sign on the door saying "do not enter if you have a temperature". I can let this slide at the barber where I know it's an honest mistake, but at the doctor's (and this is a doctor who would not be seeing anyone with a fever) they should know they mean fever. I enter anyway. I am mildly uncomfortable the entire time I'm there because I've broken the rules, even though I know they meant fever and not temperature.
  2. A nut-free daycare classroom for 6-14 month olds. We are not a nut-free house. These kids put absolutely everything in their mouths. We do not pack anything with nuts as an ingredient. We decided "may contain" is also out, but allow "produced in a facility that also produces...". We don't allow our kid to eat any nuts before going to daycare in the morning, but do allow nuts and nut products on weekends and in evenings and there isn't always a bath between then and daycare. And so on. In short, we've developed our own set of rules to interpret the "nut-free" policy, but they do represent some amount of burden and still may not be enough to keep a severely allergic kid safe. 

These examples illustrate my point that it is very common in society to be left to interpret the true meaning of a stated rule. In example (1) I could tell they couldn't mean it as written and could infer what they almost certainly did mean. In (2) I was left to my best judgement.

I think your point is that more places should have detailed, explicit, and reasonable policies, because there exists too many possible interpretations of the current policy some of which are too burdensome and some of which are too permissive. For something like a dance weekend or a daycare, a fuller policy could be provided in a somewhat functional format. For a single dance, a full set of rules (cologne bad, shampoo OK as long as an average person can't smell it from 3 feet away, etc.) would quickly turn into a waiver type situation that probably 5% of people would read which doesn't make it a particularly practical solution. 

What would be better? A world in which everyone was like you and me and approached every social interaction like a new board game with its own rule book is not the world we live in. In the end it's probably up to us to learn what we need to in order to make the burden-community wellness tradeoffs that others are perhaps able to make more instinctively. 

The problem is that the folks that fail in the "didn't do enough" direction are easier to identify and correct. The "did too much" or "saw it so big a burden they opted out entirely" direction is harder to correct for. But probably "so burdensome that no reasonable person would attend" is a clue that we've gone too far.

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An honest attempt to describe what you're technically supposed to do if you follow the posted policies. I don't think anyone actually expects you to do this!

Great to hear that you've decided to attend your first contra dance! It's really easy to get started, they're a lot of fun, and it's a friendly and welcoming community. You just show up, the caller tells you what to do, and in a few minutes you're dancing. It's got the best learning curve out there!

There's one minor exception, however, which is that some dances are "fragrance free". For these you'll need a little prep: plan to start getting ready about three weeks before your first fragrance free event. I know this can be a bit more time than you were expecting to invest before learning whether this is an activity you'd enjoy, but trust me: it's worth it!

It can be a little hard to figure out whether a dance you're considering attending is fragrance free. While some dances list it on the homepage, you can't count on that. For example, it could be at the bottom of the code of conduct or listed on a dance etiquette page. The safest thing to do is to read the whole website, but of course that's a ton of work so you might want to write to the organizers.

Once you find the policy, it probably looks something like:

These Dances are Fragrance Free - please do not wear perfume, cologne, or other scented products, as some of our dancers are chemically sensitive, and experience discomfort when exposed to these materials.

Read it carefully! While many people initially interpret these policies to prohibit perfume, "scented products" includes soap, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, laundry detergent, etc. I recommend you start three weeks before the event, and spend a week noting the ingredients on each product you use. Read them over, looking for the words "fragrance" or "parfum". If you don't see those, there's still some chance that it's a scented product, unfortunately: sometimes individual fragrance ingredients are mentioned by name instead. I recommend taking a picture of the ingredients and uploading it to an LLM with a prompt like "are any of these ingredients fragrances"?

Note that some products will say "unscented", but still have fragrances. This is very confusing, but the basic idea is that an "unscented" product is intended not to smell like anything, and might include "masking fragrances" to cover the scents of the ingredients. Products that say "fragrance free" are a better bet, but the term is not heavily regulated and there are products out there like this eucalyptus lavender soap bar that say "free from any fragrances" but also have strongly scented essential oils:

Two weeks week before the event you should have your list of the products you need to find substitutes for. It's the same deal as before: analyze ingredient lists on potential replacements, and again LLMs may be useful. Here are some product lists that might be helpful in getting started: EastBayMeditation, FGC. If the cost is a burden, and a full set of personal care products can be a substantial investment, consider writing to the organizers to ask if they have a fragrance-free fund.

With medical products, like a medicated shampoo that happens to be scented, sometimes a fragrance free replacement is not an option. I'd recommend talking to the organizers: they may be willing to consider an exception. This is another reason to start early, since most of these events are organized by committees and can take a while to come to a decision.

About a week before the event you should have acquired all your replacement products: now it's time to start using them! The goal is that by the time you attend the event you no longer have any lingering fragrances on yourself or your clothes. For clothes in particular scents can last a long time, so the safest thing to do is clean your washing machine (wash the machine with baking soda, then again with vinegar) and then wash your clothes twice. If you use a laundromat there aren't any good options, since fragrance free laundromats are essentially not a thing, but if you ask around you may be able to find a friend who has their own machine and either already takes a fragrance free approach or is willing to help you out.

At this point, you're ready to attend the dance! Make sure you're wearing clothes that have been washed since you transitioned away from scented products. It's also a good idea to bring your own hand soap: it's sadly common for fragrance free dances to have scented products in their bathrooms. I hope you have a great time!

While this post is using satire to make a point, my core view is that it's fine for dances to have whatever approach to fragrances they choose as long as they're thoughtful about what they actually expect attendees to do and communicate it clearly. When I've written about this before I've read a lot of comments from people who don't see a problem with the status quo. My target with the satire here is dances that put a few words about a policy on their page that they don't actually expect people to follow, don't put effort into ensuring potential attendees see, and sometimes even blatantly subvert by having scented products available at their dances.

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