Big Love

The argument for Eau de You

Psychology is fascinating, in this case the field of evolutionary psychology, which in the 90’s saw the role of what became known as “The Sweaty T-Shirt Experiment” and its implications on B.O.

In a recent episode from Season 3 of And Just Like That, a subplot examined the role of deodorant and B.O. in the relationship of Seema Patel and Adam. He even coats his lips with her deodorant and kisses her so that she knows what it tastes like when he kisses her armpit. Yes, that happens. Adam is more into eco friendly deodorant and gifts Seema a crystal deodorant.

When I first learned of the sweaty t-shirt experiment, my interest in the innate wisdom of my animal instinct was piqued.

In a nutshell, the experiment revealed new findings about what a woman finds attractive in a mate. Height, eye color, and style? Nope. Rather smell was instrumental in leading a woman to rank attractiveness based on the scent of t-shirts worn by different men.

Those t-shirts ranked hottest by a woman were found to be linked to an evolutionary advantage due to a broader immune system should offspring result.

In the first “sweaty T-shirt” experiment, a Swiss zoologist, Claus Wedekind, set up a test of women’s sensitivity to male odors. He assembled volunteers, 49 women and 44 men selected for their variety of MHC gene types. He gave the men clean T-shirts to wear for two nights and then return to the scientists.

In the laboratory, the researchers put each T-shirt in a box equipped with a smelling hole and invited the women volunteers to come in, one at a time, and sniff the boxes. Their task was to sample the odor of seven boxes and describe each odor as to intensity, pleasantness, and sexiness.

The results were striking. Overall, the women preferred the scents of T-shirts worn by men whose MHC genes were different from their own.

PBS https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/6/l_016_08.html

This, along with other studies on the impacts of birth control on mate selection led me down the unscented rabbit hole.

I began to notice that everything was scented. Two important products that scent items included laundry soap and fabric softener, but also most beauty products, perfumes, shampoo and conditioner, even feminine products such as pads. Not to mention products that aimed to scent – candles, room sprays and plug-ins, diffusers, incense. Then there were cleaning products, from dish soap to antibacterial sprays.

One by one I eliminated the scented products.

Oddly enough, in doing so, I became more sensitive and attuned to smell.

My focus was not to wear patchouli oil and reject mass marketed soap. Rather, it was to stop masking my pheromones or the ability to smell a potential mate’s pheromones.

I’m not perfect in my resolve to weed out strong smelling products and unnatural scents. But I put effort into living with products that let me smell like me.

A recent discovery was a store called Sustainable Exchange https://sustainablexchange.com/ that sells high quality, unscented, small batch soap. At the store you can bring your own bottle or purchase a glass one to be filled. While I thought I had been using clean soap, I learned the truth. Now, using my new soaps, I appreciate that they are aligned with my goals.