Smell
and the rules of attraction
News flash! The way you smell plays a
big part in your ability to attract a mate! So says a recent
Canadian poll which found that 55 percent of those surveyed said
they would be turned off by a date that "smelled bad."
By comparison, only 22 percent said they would lose interest in a
poor conversationalist. The survey, conducted in 2005 by Decima
Research for AXE Canada, sheds new light on the importance of
invisible cues that influence attraction.
Nice to smell you
While not a conscious act, humans systemically sniff one another
when meeting, a hangover perhaps from our tree-dwelling days. Smell
researchers Barbara Sommerville and David Gee of the University of
Leeds in England observed that smelling one another's faces is a
nearly universal human greeting; the Eskimo kiss is not just a
quaint rubbing of noses but the opportunity to give one another a
good sniff. In the Western world, this custom is not part of our
social etiquette, but we still get the chance to surreptitiously
consider another's scent — when we kiss their cheek to say hello.
The power for perfume
Since ancient times, people have worn fragrance as a way of boosting
their sex appeal. The word perfume comes from the Latin per meaning
"through" and fumus meaning "smoke" — hinting at the origin of
perfume as we know it in the form of incense. During the
Renaissance, perfume was a sign of affluence — and an absence of
plumbing. Aristocrats routinely doused themselves with scent to mask
their body odour. These days perfume is big business; scents are
mass-marketed around the globe with scantily clad celebrities and
models promising more romance, increased sex appeal and irresistible
powers of seduction. In the '70s, Jovan Musk Oil used
none-too-subtle claims of boosted sex appeal in their advertising,
claiming: "Sex appeal. Now you don't have to be born with it." And
consumers, quite literally, bought it. Sales of the scent escalated
from US$1.5 million in 1971 to a staggering US$77 million by 1978 —
driving the poor musk deer, from which the musk essence is
extracted, to the point of extinction.
The Lynx effect
But it's not just perfume marketing that can have a profound affect
on consumers. Unilever, makers of Lynx deodorant, have developed a
global advertising initiative that has captured the imagination and
dollars of its target audience — single men. The campaigns for the
deodorant expound the irresistible powers of attraction bestowed
upon the wearer, transforming the meek and bespectacled into über-Lotharios
who leave a trail of swooning, gorgeous women in their wake. The
so-called Lynx effect.
The Lynx effect in action
I can attest to the power of the Lynx Effect. Whilst working for a
media organisation in London, I was inexplicably drawn to a male
colleague who displayed not one of the characteristics I usually
found attractive in a mate. Despite this, I was compelled to pass
his desk several times a day when in fact I had no business being
anywhere near his workstation. A dalliance soon followed. Once, when
cosied up against his spectacularly un-muscular chest, nostrils
filled with the heady, vanilla-y scent of his cologne, I asked what
aftershave he wore. "None", he replied. "Just Lynx Africa." The Lynx
effect in action.
The MHC effect
Irresistible as synthetic scents can be, there's nothing more
powerfully attractive than our very own bodily scent. Researchers
have learned that a segment of our DNA called the major
histocompatibility complex (MHC) can be detected by smell and that
women use this as a means of choosing a mate with whom they share
the least genetic similarities — all part of nature's way of
ensuring we don't breed with our brothers and sisters.
A team led by Claus Wedekind at the University of Bern in
Switzerland decided to see whether MHC differences in men's apocrine
gland secretions affected women's ratings on male smells. Around 100
male test subjects were asked to wear a T-shirt for two consecutives
days, during which time they were advised not to wear deodorant,
have sex or eat spicy foods. After this time, the T-shirts were
presented to a group of women test subjects who were asked to sniff
them and rank them according to "sexiness," "pleasantness," and
"intensity of smell."
Wedekind and his team found that women preferred T-shirts that had
been worn, and thus scented, by men whose MHC profiles were most
different to their own. The researchers also found that women taking
the contraceptive pill were, conversely, attracted to men who had
similar MHC profiles to their own, the pill masking their innate
drive to choose a genetically different mate.
There's no doubt that fragrances can make you smell good, elevate
your mood and boost your confidence — all very important factors
when it comes to making a good first impression with a potential
mate. But when it comes to finding a single scent that has the power
to make you more alluring to members of the opposite sex, you just
can't go past your natural scent. Invisible, free ... and utterly
irresistible.
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