"I judge people on how they smell, not how they look"
About this Quote
Smell is intimacy’s shortcut. You can curate an outfit for the room, but scent is harder to fully fake; it clings, lingers, leaks. So the quote reads as a bid for authenticity in a culture of filters and performance. It’s also a power move. To “judge” by smell implies proximity and permission: I’m close enough to you to detect the real you, and I’m confident enough to make that the metric.
The subtext gets thornier when you zoom out. Scent is class-coded (clean laundry, expensive perfume, time to shower), culturally coded (food, spices, smoke, workplaces), even morally coded (“clean” as virtue). Framed casually, it risks smuggling old prejudices back in through the supposedly natural authority of the senses. The nose can be biased while feeling objective.
Context matters: celebrity life is an ecosystem of constant contact - meetings, glam squads, crowded sets, fans. “How they smell” can also mean how they carry themselves: hygiene, effort, respect for shared space. Lopez turns a personal boundary into a punchy ethos, mixing relatability with the faint, unmistakable scent of control.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Lopez, Jennifer. (n.d.). I judge people on how they smell, not how they look. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-judge-people-on-how-they-smell-not-how-they-look-31870/
Chicago Style
Lopez, Jennifer. "I judge people on how they smell, not how they look." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-judge-people-on-how-they-smell-not-how-they-look-31870/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I judge people on how they smell, not how they look." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-judge-people-on-how-they-smell-not-how-they-look-31870/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.









