Monday, October 26, 2009

The Scent Of A Man



The more I learn about my own gender, the more I realize what mysterious and strange, yet beautifully particular creatures we women are. Dr. Rachel Herz has recently confirmed everything that I've ever said about the importance of a man's scent to a woman, in her article 'The Scent of Sex' http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/3256 . She explains how a man's immune system must be the opposite of ours, for us to be able to fend of "nasty recessive diseases", and to want to breed with him.

According to Dr. Herz, "women actually find how a man smells to be the most important factor in their sexual attraction". That's trumping power and money! Which explains why I've observed that, in the course of a conversation between me and my girlfriends, if one of us talks about a guy and doesn't say "oh my God, he smells soo good", I know that he's not going to be a real keeper. So basically, if a man's immune system doesn't jive with ours, then we will not be attracted to his individual scent. My translation to this would be, if you don't want to bottle his natural scent, then you'll be kicking him out of your bed sooner than later.



As I read this article by Dr. Herz, I was amazed and validated to find out the true biological importance of this part of sexual attraction for women. "In two large studies we conducted to examine how important various physical and social status factors were for men and women when choosing a sexual partner, we discovered that above all other physical characteristics, women ranked a man's scent as the most important feature for determining whether she would be sexually interested in him. How a man smelled was also much more important than any social status factor. And of all physical characteristics women preferred a man to the "better than average" in his body odor than anything else. Women also found men who smelled great due to the fragrance they wore irresistible. In the words of one respondent: "If I'm with a guy who smells really good, nothing else about him seems to matter."



Additionally, if a guys natural scent is wonderful, then when we go out, and he puts a nice cologne over that wonderful, natural scent, it's just that much hotter. And if we are grabbing your pillow to hold and smell after you're gone... it might just be love.