Attempting to navigate the dating scene means understanding there’s a certain mystery to attraction. Although people frequently cite appearance, sense of humour and intelligence as the most important factors in assessing an individual’s allure, there may be a secret to seduction right under our noses.
It’s no mystery men and women gain an attractiveness when they apply different scents for different occasions. The use of perfumes to improve personal fragrance dates back thousands of years, spanning cultural and continental divides. Although the practice of applying perfume may be as old as the art of flirtation itself, modern scientific research suggests there is more to the art of olfactory seduction than one may initially think.
Glynis Gould, manager of media relations at the Athena Institute for Women’s Wellness, located in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, said pheromones are an extremely dominant aspect in attracting a partner.
Pheromones are olfactory chemical signals that trigger a certain natural response across of the same species. They have a direct effect on hormone changes or even behavioural changes, depending on their strength and type.
“According to the research we’ve done, pheromones will lure someone to you even more powerfully or at least as powerfully as appearance,” she said. “Then, once they’ve come towards you, then starts the interplay of the other dynamics. In humans, pheromones appear to work through the olfactory system and without conscious awareness, and they appear to be odourless. It is reasonable to assume that, like IQ, beauty, height and so on, there is a distribution [of pheromones] among individuals that is widely varied.”
Gould said for a maximum effect, synthetic pheromones such as perfumes and scented oils should be applied topically, mixed with one’s own favourite fragrance and worn as directed.
“Compared to [those using a placebo], 74 to 75 per cent of those wearing Athena Pheromones —scented toiletries much like perfumes and colognes—reported an increase over their baseline frequency in romantic attention,” she said. “And it’s not just ; it includes affection, along with informal and formal dating.”
Gould said her research suggested pheromones diminish with age, for instance after menopause or after hysterectomy.
“I understood this when developing and testing my two pheromone cosmetics, which are chemical copies of the sex attractant pheromones emitted from sexually attractive men and women in their late 20s or early 30s, which is their reproductive age.”
Gould said in humans, pheromones appear to work through the olfactory system and without conscious awareness.
“They appear to be odourless since both the original underarm sweat extracts we filtered through charcoal, froze and thawed a year later, as well as the products Athena Pheromone 10:13tm [and Athena Pheromone 10X]. In both cases the products were demonstrated to be effective at increasing the attractiveness of the wearer.”
Gould said although pheromones have a strong impact on attraction, other factors such as personality, physical attraction and physical connection are still just as important.
“A man may come toward a woman because he’s pheromonally attracted and decide as he’s with her, that other things aren’t adequate and he goes away.”
Gould has created two specific pheromones that are chemical copies of the human attraction components. Winnifred Cutler, a biologist and founder of the Athena Institute, has also found in her research that people in a loving sexual relationship are considered more attractive to the opposite sex, compared to those who are single or celibate.
The NDP Group, a market research group, has conducted research about the best-selling perfumes for women. Beautiful Estée Lauder, Coco Mademoiselle Chanel, Light Blue Dolce & Gabbana and Chanel No. 5 were among the top picks for shoppers.
In one of his articles for the New York Times, Chandler Burr, perfume expert and acclaimed author of The Perfect Scent, wrote about a woman who sat next to him at a dinner, emitting a wonderful and mysterious scent. When he finally figured out her smell, he was surprised to find out the scent belonged to Eau Sauvage, a men’s cologne by Dior.
“As the roles of women have changed and multiplied over the last century, the idea of what is feminine has become a much more interesting question,” he wrote. “Perfume can now be feminine in surprising ways, or masculine without making straight men worry that they’re playing ‘The Crying Game’.”
Burr also observed that men can wear feminine scents just as effectively as different colognes.
“A roommate of mine in boarding school, a football-playing jock, sprayed some [Quartz by Molyneux, a floral-scented perfume]as a joke,” he wrote. “…and later hunted me down and muttered, ‘Man, where can I get that stuff?’ He claimed to have been nuzzled by five cuties in English class.” In Winnifred Cutler’s published paper, “Pheromones, Sexual Attractiveness and Quality of Life in Menopausal Women,” in the journal Climacteric in June 2002, she wrote about the importance of pheromones for human relationships.
“In humans, four behavioral classes of pheromones have been identified,” she wrote.
“Opposite-sex attractants, male territorial markers or repellents that drive away sexual competitors, substances from babies also found in breast milk that facilitate the mother-infant bond and male and female underarm essences involved in maintaining fertility.
“We accept without question, that consensual affectionate behavior enhances well-being. While secreted hormones serve to maintain the self, excreted pheromones [aid in facilitating] relationships with others.”
When asked where to spray perfume, Coco Chanel once famously answered, “Anywhere one wants to be kissed.” The relationship between scent and attraction has been observed and practiced religiously for ages, from Cleopatra’s lavish use of perfume to Christian Dior’s classic scent, Poison. In choosing one’s perfume, one must keep in mind scent’s role in attraction and the kind of partners the scent will draw in.
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