Men, Body Perfume and Pheremones

Posted by noemi in My Family | 16 comments

TweetI called it a night. As is our usual loving ritual, my husband cuddles to kiss me a “Good night!”. Something different happened though. This time he whispered “You smell nice!” as he buried his nose into my hair. I turned around at him, incredulous and thought ” Oh my, he must be joking!” so I asked him to repeat it. You smell nice. In all our 30 years as a couple, I’ve never heard him compliment on any of my perfumes. Heck, he even buys me really expensive perfumes without fail. Sometimes I think he has no sense of smell due to his chronic sinusitis. The reason I thought he was joking was because a few hours before bedtime, I splashed my neck with Vanilla body spray given to me for testing. Ugh, I detest the smell of this cheap vanilla scent. Horrible! I nearly choked on it and immediately masked the cheap aroma by rubbing my body with the Body Shop Moringa lotion. I even let my daughter test it for me and she thought it was horrid as well. I thought, “I smell so cheap”. Since I just took a shower, I decided to just leave it as it is since I knew my husband wouldn’t notice it anyway or so I thought. Besides, I was too sleepy to take another shower.

Upon hearing him say it was a nice smell, I was stupefied. What is the secret of this cheap vanilla scent which probably cost less than 200 pesos that my expensive scents didn’t merit his attention?

I might have found the answer in Why Expensive Perfumes Fail.

Research Studies conducted by Alan Hirsch and Jason Gruss (Smell and Taste Treatment Research Foundation, Chicago, Illinois and University of Michigan) revealed that expensive perfumes are much less effective than many essential oils and common foods. The research results revealed effects of many different scents on sexual arousal of males and females by comparing their blood flow in sexual-aroused tissues (penile or clitoral blood flow) while wearing scented masks and while wearing non odorized, blank masks. Expensive perfumes increased blood flow by only 3%. In contrast the combined odor of lavender and pumpkin produced a 40% increase and many other scents worked better than perfumes.

I also brought this out in Plurk and the male plurk buddies think that “anything with food smells good”. If you check the research results on Effect of Perfumes and Scents on Blood Flow in Male Sexual Tissue, scents like Lavender and pumpkin pie , Pumpkin pie and doughnut, Orange, Black licorice and cola topped the list.

The cheap vanilla scent may have reacted well with my body that it created a distinct “odor signature” that my husband liked. As you might know, the “odor signature” is a complex mixture of pheromones, body oils and fatty acids, sweat, and hormones such as androsterone secreted onto the skin from your apocrine glands. In addition, the 40 million skin cells that you shed each day add to your pheromone signature.

However, I don’t think I can stomach the smell of cheap vanilla scent every night just so I can hear my husband’s compliments. Perhaps, I can buy a more aromatic Vanilla scent and see if it receives the same compliment and which won’t make me puke.

“The purest union that can exist between
a man and a woman is that created
by the sense of smell and sanctioned
by the brain’s normal assimilation
of the animate molecules emitted
by the secretions produced by two bodies
in contact and sympathy,
and in their subsequent evaporation.”
(Auguste Galopin in “The Perfume of Women and the Sense of Smell in Love”)

What about you? What scent catches the attention of your partner?

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