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The epistemic status of odors has got a special place in the scientific literature, especially in cognitive psychology and in anthropology of the senses. Based on an ethnographic study carried out in France and French speaking Belgium, we show the limits of a prevailing conception of this work which is to sort the olfactory experiences in a hedonic cleavage, opposing good and bad smells from emotional, cognitive and normative dimensions. Building on a cognitive ethnography approach of perceptions which study odors as the consequence of a judging process that can be studied as a dense and located mental activity, we show first that the position hold by the “bad smell” of corporeality in the privacy of our informant. Then, we introduce and describe the concept of “oxymoron odors” which are judged simultaneously good and bad. Both cases illustrate the limits of an analysis in terms of odor hedonic cleavage. Beyond this specific issue, we aim to promote the ethnographic analysis of cognitive judgments at the heart of intimacy as a framework for the development of anthropology of the senses, and a way to reconcile anthropology and the work of cognitive psychology in this field.