Shortly before the first Corona lockdown in spring 2020, I was busy preparing for a field research in Turkey that would deal with a much neglected topic in the academic literature on beauty, namely the role of smells and fragrances. I read about the history of olfactory cultures and perfumes (and finally could not leave for the field research) and started talking about the topic with relatives, neighbours and friends living in Berlin. The mother of a friend who came to Germany with the first generation of Turkish guest workers recalled how her elderly German neighbour kept telling her in the early 1980s that she "stank of garlic". Despite her border violating pushiness, my friend's mother recalled that this statement was made in a seemingly friendly, matter-of-fact manner. Almost four decades later, she was still puzzled and disturbed by these remarks because she had never liked or consumed garlic. Another friend, Sibel, the Berlin-born daughter of Turkish immigrants, told me about her great fear of being perceived as smelly. Sibel was aware of the common stereotype that Turkish women, especially those with headscarves, "smell like sweat and kitchen", as she put it. (...)