I live in Europe and I regularly see signs asking people to not wear perfume/strong scents. These signs are placed in public transport, locker rooms at gyms, and even the toilet at my workplace. Based on that, some level of sensitivity to scents seems to be common in most contexts.
(Usually the signs I see are more like “avoid strong scents” than “fragrance free”, so they avoid the confusion about scented soaps and shampoos. I don’t know if the contra dances mentioned here actually want people to avoid all possible scented products or just perfumes.)
In any case, dancing in close contact with someone who’s wearing a perfume is clearly much worse than going to a shop where some other customer wears a perfume. In a shop you can just walk away if the smell is too strong.
I live in Europe and I regularly see signs asking people to not wear perfume/strong scents. These signs are placed in public transport, locker rooms at gyms, and even the toilet at my workplace. Based on that, some level of sensitivity to scents seems to be common in most contexts.
(Usually the signs I see are more like “avoid strong scents” than “fragrance free”, so they avoid the confusion about scented soaps and shampoos. I don’t know if the contra dances mentioned here actually want people to avoid all possible scented products or just perfumes.)
In any case, dancing in close contact with someone who’s wearing a perfume is clearly much worse than going to a shop where some other customer wears a perfume. In a shop you can just walk away if the smell is too strong.