Baby, I Love Your... Sweat!

A while back a good friend of mine was seeing a woman who openly confessed to him that she felt attracted to him when she could smell his sweat. (The reasons for the initial attraction were different... or at least I hope they were!) At the time I thought to myself: "Well, strange women are everywhere, so I'm not surprised!" But now I know that it's actually quite common and normal for women feel that way.

Yup, in case you're not sure you just misread or misunderstood that, let me repeat it again:

Apparently women are attracted to a man's sweat. 

To be more exact, to its odor. Nice, huh?

In his book Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman notes that while men are sexually attracted to a female for visual reasons (big shock, right?), women tend to feel this kind of attraction due to olfactory reasons: they either like or don't like how you smell.

"Scientists have found that the scent of a man's perspiration can have remarkable effects on women's emotions,  brightening their moods, relaxing them, and raising their levels of the luteinizing reproductive hormones that bring on ovulation." (p. 200)

Now this is where it gets really, um, interesting. Make sure you're not eating anything while you read how the study was done:

"Samples from the underarms of men who had not used deodorant for four weeks were blended into a concoction that was dabbed on the upper lip of young women who had volunteered for what they thought was a study of the scent of products like floor wax. When the scent was from a man's sweat rather than from some other source, the women felt more relaxed and happy."(p. 200f)

Ok, two things: (1) Men who don't use deodorant for four weeks? That should seriously be illegal. (2) The women thought they were smelling floor wax? Wow, researchers can be really cruel at times.

I have to say that I'm kind of speechless here... Are there any female readers of this blog out there that want to shed some light on the issue? Even if it's just to tell us that we should keep using our deodorants. It would be greatly appreciated...