// Smelebrity - journal / editorial essays.
// Add one object to GUIDES, then run: node build.js

const GUIDES = [
  {
    slug: 'cologne-interview-confidence',
    title: 'The Cologne I Wore to the Interview That Changed My Life',
    category: 'Confidence',
    publishDate: '2026-05-15',
    heroText:
      'I was nineteen, wearing a borrowed suit and a fragrance I had never heard of. What happened in that room had almost nothing to do with the job - and everything to do with how I finally felt like I belonged.',
    sections: [
      {
        heading: 'The outsider in the hallway',
        paragraphs: [
          'I still remember the air in that office building - cold, filtered, faintly metallic. I had taken the train in from the suburbs in a suit that was slightly too long in the sleeves and shoes that squeaked when I walked. Everyone around me looked like they had been born knowing which fork to use at lunch. I was there for my first real corporate interview, and I was convinced they would see through me in the first thirty seconds.',
          'The night before, my older cousin had pressed a small bottle into my hand. "Boss Energized," he said. "Just a spray. Trust me." I had never bought cologne in my life. Fragrance felt like something other people did - people with money, with confidence, with a version of adulthood I had not earned yet.',
          'I applied one spray to my chest before I left the apartment. Apple, cinnamon, something clean underneath. It did not smell like luxury. It smelled like someone who had their life together. That was the point.',
        ],
      },
      {
        heading: 'Borrowed confidence',
        paragraphs: [
          'Psychologists talk about "enclothed cognition" - the idea that what you wear changes how you think and perform. Fragrance works the same way, only faster. You cannot always afford the right suit. You cannot always control your nerves. But you can choose what you smell like when you walk through a door.',
          'In the waiting room I sat with my hands clasped so tightly my knuckles went white. Then someone walked past and the scent lifted off my shirt - bright, warm, unmistakably put-together. I sat up straighter without deciding to. My shoulders dropped half an inch. I was not suddenly a different person. I was still me. But I was wearing proof that I had prepared.',
          'That is what fragrance gave me that morning: not magic, not deception - a borrowed inch of confidence I could stand on until my own caught up.',
        ],
      },
      {
        heading: 'The door that opened',
        paragraphs: [
          'The interview itself is a blur of questions I had rehearsed and answers that sounded steadier than I felt. What I remember clearly is the handshake at the end - firm, unhurried - and the hiring manager saying, almost offhand, "You seem composed. That is rare for a first-timer."',
          'I got the role. It was not because of cologne. It was because I showed up prepared, asked good questions, and did not apologise for being there. But I would be lying if I said the scent did not matter. It was the first time I understood that how you present yourself sends a signal before you speak - and that signal can be learned.',
          'Boss Energized became the scent I wore through that first year - not because it was the best fragrance in the world, but because it was tied to the first time I believed I deserved to be in the room. That association is powerful. Your brain does not forget it.',
        ],
      },
      {
        heading: 'Fragrance as a tool, not a trophy',
        paragraphs: [
          'I think a lot of men are taught that caring about how you smell is vain or feminine or somehow beneath seriousness. That is nonsense. Athletes visualise before a game. Speakers rehearse before a stage. Why would you not use every honest tool available before a moment that matters?',
          'Fragrance is not about pretending to be someone else. It is about choosing the version of yourself you want to lead with. Some days that is quiet and clean. Some days it is bold. The bottle is just the anchor - the ritual of applying it is what tells your nervous system: we are ready now.',
          'Years later I have worn dozens of scents. Some I loved, some I abandoned after a week. But I never forgot that interview, or what it taught me about the gap between how you feel and how you are perceived - and how small, deliberate choices can close that gap.',
        ],
      },
      {
        heading: 'Find your own door',
        paragraphs: [
          'If you are standing outside a room you are not sure you belong in - a job interview, a first date, a conversation you have been avoiding - you do not need the most expensive bottle on the shelf. You need one that makes you stand taller when you catch it on your cuff.',
          'That might be a fresh office scent like the one I wore at nineteen. It might be something darker, warmer, more private. The right answer is the one that makes you feel like you chose to be there.',
          'We built Smelebrity for exactly that moment: not to sell you hype, but to show you what the people you admire actually wear - so you can borrow their confidence until yours is fully yours. Pick a celebrity whose energy matches the room you are walking into. Wear it once. See what changes.',
        ],
      },
    ],
  },
  {
    slug: 'why-scent-changes-perception',
    title: 'Why Smelling Good Changes How People Treat You',
    category: 'Psychology',
    publishDate: '2026-05-18',
    heroText:
      'You speak with your voice, your clothes, your posture - but your scent arrives first. Here is why that matters more than most men realise.',
    sections: [
      {
        heading: 'The invisible handshake',
        paragraphs: [
          'Before anyone reads your résumé, notices your watch, or hears your name, they breathe you in. Olfaction is the only sense that plugs directly into the brain\'s limbic system - the seat of emotion and memory - without passing through the thalamus, the brain\'s usual filter. That is why a smell can stop you mid-step and pull you into a memory you did not know you were carrying.',
          'Proust knew it. An entire literary movement is named after the moment a madeleine dipped in tea unlocked years of his childhood. You have had your own version: a ex-partner\'s perfume in a crowd, your father\'s aftershave in a department store, sunscreen that throws you straight back to a holiday you thought you had forgotten.',
          'What this means in practice is simple and slightly unfair: people feel something about you before they think something about you. Scent is not a detail. It is a first impression with no words attached.',
        ],
      },
      {
        heading: 'Status, competence, and warmth',
        paragraphs: [
          'Research on social perception consistently shows that pleasant fragrance increases ratings of attractiveness, likability, and perceived competence - even when evaluators cannot see the person clearly. In one line of studies, participants rated the same individual more favourably when wearing a commercially pleasant scent versus none, controlling for grooming and dress.',
          'That is not shallow. Humans use every available signal to make fast judgments about trust and status. Clean, intentional scent reads as self-care. Self-care reads as stability. Stability reads as someone worth listening to.',
          'The opposite is true too. No scent at all is neutral - fine in some contexts. But overpowering, discordant, or "I grabbed whatever was on the shelf" scent sends a different message: carelessness, or anxiety masked with too much product. The goal is not to be noticed for your fragrance. The goal is to be remembered for everything else, with scent quietly supporting the picture.',
        ],
      },
      {
        heading: 'Memory is a loyalty machine',
        paragraphs: [
          'Once someone associates you with a specific smell, you are etched into their memory differently than people who blur together. Couples remember each other\'s fragrances decades later. Colleagues mention "that guy who always smells incredible" without knowing his name. The olfactory-emotion link is why brands spend billions on signature scents - they are buying permanence in your head.',
          'You can use the same mechanism personally. A consistent signature scent becomes part of your identity in other people\'s minds. Not because they obsess over it, but because consistency builds recognition, and recognition builds comfort. Comfort is the soil trust grows in.',
          'This does not require one bottle for life. It requires intention: knowing what you smell like on a good day, and repeating that when the stakes are high.',
        ],
      },
      {
        heading: 'Confidence you can smell on yourself',
        paragraphs: [
          'There is also a private side to all of this. When you know you smell good, your behaviour shifts - posture, eye contact, pace of speech. You have felt it. The mirror check before you leave home is not vanity; it is calibration.',
          'Fragrance is one of the fastest calibration tools available. Thirty seconds in the morning - spray, pause, one breath - and your nervous system receives a small, reliable signal: we are ready. That signal compounds through the day every time you catch a note on your wrist.',
          'Men who say they "do not care about scent" often mean they were never taught how to use it. Once they find one that fits - not loud, not trendy, just right for their skin and their life - they rarely go back.',
        ],
      },
      {
        heading: 'Use it on purpose',
        paragraphs: [
          'You do not need a wardrobe of bottles. You need one scent for ordinary days and one for when you want to be unforgettable. Learn where to spray - pulse points, not clouds in the elevator. Learn that two sprays beat five.',
          'Then pay attention to feedback. Not compliments - though those are nice - but how you feel in the room. Do conversations open easier? Do you interrupt yourself less? Do you leave wishing you had said more, or satisfied you said enough?',
          'Smell is the part of your presence you have been ignoring. Start treating it like the rest of your toolkit - deliberate, personal, and yours. When you are ready to choose, the celebrity scents on Smelebrity are a useful place to begin: real fragrances, real people, no guesswork.',
        ],
      },
    ],
  },
  {
    slug: 'walk-into-any-room-confidence',
    title: 'How to Walk Into Any Room Like You Belong There',
    category: 'Mindset',
    publishDate: '2026-05-21',
    heroText:
      'Belonging is not a personality trait. It is a set of small rituals - and fragrance is one of the smallest, most reliable ones you can own.',
    sections: [
      {
        heading: 'The room does not know you are nervous',
        paragraphs: [
          'Every man has a version of this moment: the party where you know one person, the meeting with senior leadership, the date at a restaurant that is slightly too nice. Your mind runs a private commentary - too casual, too formal, wrong shoes - while your face tries to look relaxed.',
          'Here is what helped me: the room cannot smell your internal monologue. It only receives what you project. Projection is not performance. It is the sum of small signals - how you enter, where your eyes go, whether your handshake is brief or lingering, and yes, what arrives in the air before you finish saying hello.',
          'You cannot fix everything in the ten seconds before you walk in. You can fix one thing completely: the scent you carry with you.',
        ],
      },
      {
        heading: 'Choose a signature, not a collection',
        paragraphs: [
          'The biggest mistake men make with fragrance is owning twelve bottles and committing to none. A signature scent does not mean wearing the same formula for twenty years. It means having a default - a smell that feels like you on a good day - that you return to when you need to feel like yourself.',
          'Start by asking what energy you want in the room. Calm and competent? Reach for something clean with citrus or soft woods. Magnetic and social? Something warmer - spice, amber, a little sweetness. Serious and private? Deeper notes: vetiver, leather, iris.',
          'If you admire someone\'s presence - an actor, an athlete, a public figure - finding out what they actually wear is not copying. It is aspiration with a map. You are not them. But you can borrow the emotional frame their scent suggests until your own fills in.',
        ],
      },
      {
        heading: 'The ritual matters more than the brand',
        paragraphs: [
          'Apply fragrance after shower, on clean skin, before you dress. Two sprays: one on the chest under your shirt, one on the back of the neck if you want projection without shouting. That is enough.',
          'Pause for one breath. Not for drama - for anchoring. Athletes have pre-game routines. Speakers have vocal warm-ups. This is yours: a repeatable signal that the next hour belongs to the version of you who chose to show up.',
          'Do it every time the stakes feel raised, not only on special occasions. Consistency trains your nervous system. Eventually the scent alone triggers the posture - shoulders back, chin level, pace unhurried.',
        ],
      },
      {
        heading: 'Aspiration without impersonation',
        paragraphs: [
          'There is a difference between wearing a celebrity\'s fragrance to become them and wearing it to borrow a feeling. The first never works - you will always know you are playing dress-up. The second works because feelings are transferable.',
          'Chris Hemsworth\'s polished office-safe scent might help you before a presentation. A darker, niche leather might help you feel unbothered at a dinner where you do not know anyone. The bottle is a prop in the best sense - a physical reminder of who you are allowed to be in that room.',
          'The goal is not compliments. The goal is the moment you stop scanning the room for exits and start listening to what people are actually saying.',
        ],
      },
      {
        heading: 'Belonging is practised',
        paragraphs: [
          'Nobody walks into every room naturally at ease. The men who seem to belong everywhere have usually practised - in small rooms first, with low stakes, building evidence that they can hold a conversation, ask a question, stay present.',
          'Fragrance will not do that work for you. It will not replace preparation or kindness or curiosity. What it will do is give you one less thing to doubt when the door opens.',
          'Pick one scent this week. Wear it to something that matters a little. Notice what shifts. Then explore the celebrity fragrances on Smelebrity - not as a shopping list, but as a library of confidence you can sample until you find the chapter that sounds like you.',
        ],
      },
    ],
  },
];

window.GUIDES = GUIDES;
