Julie Longyear of Blissoma. Photograph by Byron Kerman
Behind the scenes at Blissoma. Photograph by Byron Kerman
Behind the scenes at Blissoma. Photograph by Byron Kerman
Blissoma's deodorant line. Photograph by Byron Kerman
Imagine a clutch of your smelly, sweaty neighbors eating corn dogs while laughing uproariously at knock-knock jokes. Their mouths open as they cackle wildly at the vapid jibes, and you can see the half-chewed meat in their gaping pieholes. Their lawn party is scored by the crowd noises from the Rams' weekly defeat, as relayed by the TV, which they have thoughtfully brought from inside their home and perched on a crumbling, unstable concrete birdbath. A baby crawls across the brown fescue after the family pet, a muskrat or a ferret or something, with a pink harness choking its piebald thorax.
The rodent, unnoticed by all save the baby, is desperate to begin a new life away its urban freakmasters, and flees to the west. The baby's diaper-wrapped bottom rocks side-to-side as he or she (you haven't bothered to ascertain which) pumps its fat haunches, scooting after the slinky animal. The child, you realize, is approaching the birdbath/television.
The Rams punt. Their opponents run the ball back 30 yards. 40. 50. Finally, mercifully, a tackle. The away crowd roars its vicious approval. The TV wobbles. More than one neighbor unfurls an expletive. Corn dogs are waved, angrily and then suggestively. Corn dogs are always being waved suggestively.
Time for another knock-knock joke.
Who's there? the existential query, offered through a bolus of processed pig lips and mustard.
The baby. The baby is there, you see. The baby crosses the shadow of the appliance.
How will it end?
This is the perfect time to think about deodorant.
Most of us do not wish to stink. We endeavor to cover our natural, animal smells with nature's more fragrant vegetative ones.
In a 19th-century two-family home in Hyde Park, Julie Longyear and employees operate Blissoma. The small business creates “herbal, vegan skin care and body products for the holistically inclined, including spa-quality facial-care products,” Longyear explained.
After a dozen years, Blissoma is going strong. Even stronger: Longyear’s unisex deodorant. Longyear has recently changed the formula of Blissoma's spray deodorants, available in such scents as juniper, citrus and lavender. (The first two are particularly suitable for use by dudes.) She has also just introduced an unscented stick deodorant for those who prefer daubing to spraying. It is made of mango butter, clays and “earth powders.” It is not made of propylene glycol, pthalates or synthetic aluminum compounds, which, Longyear explained, are all either bad for you or quite possibly bad for you, and frequently found in other deodorants.
“Natural deodorants are hot right now,” she added. “If it works, and doesn't irritate sensitive skin, it will sell.”
Longyear, who has a background in chemistry, said that she tries to concoct beauty and personal products that are missing from the market, that solve clients' problems, that avert allergic reaction and that combat the dryness of winter.
What she is not, she said, is trendy.
“As a small businessperson, I can't afford to follow trends,” she said.
So her facial cleansers, moisturizers, anti-aging serums, oil serums, masks, toners, antioxidant body lotions, stress-relief serums, yoga mat cleaners and soy candles in 10 scents are not newly minted pirates, so to speak, but more like stalwart sea captains who intend to ride out the tempests, even as the Kraken farts its hoary gusts into their salt-wrinkled yet moisturized faces.
Also not trendy (yet): hanging a shingle in Hyde Park, near the Old North area. Blissoma (as of seven years ago) joined a small revolution of rehabbers, retailers and resilient types breathing new life into a part of the city that can use all the economic love it can get.
“I feel like we're doing a little bit of healing by coming back into an area treated poorly over time,” Longyear said.
It's also an apt description for what Blissoma does for the body—the armpits, specifically.
And that other thing? Oh, calm down, the baby's fine. (And the ferret didn't make it far.) What those smelly neighbors of yours need isn't something you can give them. Not really. As long as they draw breath, they will defrost corn dogs of unknown provenance, keep pets that dream of life among their own kind, and gaze dreamily up the kilt of sport.
Their ripe odor, however, is more easily addressed. Wouldn't it be nice if they tried some herbal, vegan skin care and body products for the holistically inclined?
Blissoma products are available online, and at Local Harvest, Natural Way stores, O'Fallon Nutrition, Indigo Massage & Wellness, Jennifer's Pharmacy & Soda Shoppe and the Center for Mind, Body and Spirit.
You can also check them out Oct. 3-5 at the Best of Missouri Market at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
