Fortean Slips: Smell the Love

Smell the Love

by D. Trull
Enigma Editor
dtrull@parascope.com

Since time immemorial, romantic stirrings have been inextricably linked with the sense of smell. Among the fundamental elements of human courtship are roses and violets, Chanel No. 5 and Old Spice, Secret and Right Guard, Dentyne and Tic-Tacs. Our need for all these perfumey loads of fragrance would suggest a basic insecurity with our bodies' natural aromas, if not an outright fear that no one will love us if they find out how bad we stink.

But some would argue that this mentality is a grand exercise in denial, and that human beings, like countless other species, are actually turned on by each other's unsuppressed odors. We'd like to believe we've attained a level of refinement far above the butt-sniffing world of pheromones, and some experts deny that human pheromones even exist. Yet emerging evidence indicates that the smelly cover-up on our bodies is just a smelly cover-up of our true nature. A recent study claims to have shown that a woman's pheromones can have a powerful effect on a man, tricking him into thinking she's more attractive that she physically appears. In short, women are armed with chemical weapons and mind control devices on the battlefield of love.

A group of biologists led by Professor Karl Grammer at the University of Vienna tested men's reactions to a type of female pheromones called copulins. Yes, it sounds like a made-up name, like "fornicatics" or "doodanasties," but that's really what they're called. The scientists showed photographs of women and played recordings of female voices to two groups of young men. One group was secretly being exposed to synthetic copulins during the presentation, while the other group was not.

It turned out that the copulin-smelling group judged the women's faces and voices as being more attractive than the control group did. Interestingly, the differential between the two groups was most pronounced in the cases of the women whom the control group found least attractive. Professor Grammer interprets this as meaning that pheromones act as a great leveler, putting all women on an equal footing in the search for the ideal mate, including the good, the bad and the ugly. Girl power, indeed.

"Women have learned to exploit men for their own advantage," Grammer said. "There is a lot of communication going on at a level we are not conscious of."

Grammer also found that the men exposed to copulins had higher levels of testosterone in their saliva, and he claimed that their ability to process audio and visual information was "altered." Reports do not indicate whether he reached this conclusion through any additional scientific observations, or if he has assumed that the differing reactions to the show-and-tell are prima facie evidence of impaired mental faculties. Such an assessment would be consistent with the common knowledge that love makes a man get stupid.

Lest female pheromones be considered an invincible tactical combat force, Grammer has uncovered an Achilles' heel in women's biochemical arsenal: the Pill. Oral contraceptives block the production of copulins, so women on the Pill may have to rely on their more conventional feminine wiles. "This could have a negative effect on your sexual life," Grammer suggested.

I don't disagree with Grammer's science, but I think his interpretation of the data overlooks some crucial elements of human sexuality, speaking as a male with a long personal history of having been aroused and whatnot. At the risk of turning Fortean Slips into The Ricki Lake Show, I submit that a man's degree of selectiveness toward a woman is inversely proportional to the relative probability that he might ever conceivably have sex with her.

This ratio is determined by a number of complex factors, the most important of which is physical proximity. Thus, we will pompously complain that Yasmine Bleeth is too fat on Nash Bridges, and be only moderately critical of a less attractive woman walking down the street in a short skirt, and graciously disregard the bad teeth of the single girl from the apartment next door who says hello to us every morning. For better or for worse, this is how men's sliding scale of feminine beauty operates.

I believe that female pheromones act as a signal to tell men that there is a woman nearby, which means there is some possible remote chance that sex might somehow happen. Our brains are about like that dog in the Beggin' Strips commercial who gets tricked into thinking he's about to get some bacon. "Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! I smell bacon! Where's the bacon? Bacon! Yum yum yum yum yum bacon! Gimme the bacon! I love bacon! It's BACON!" It's pretty much the same process, but you can substitute the word of your choice for "bacon."

In short, I think Professor Grammer is bestowing a little too much importance on the role of female pheromones in attracting a man. If a woman is not producing copulins because she's on the Pill or whatever, it's probably not going to have much of an impact on how men perceive her. I think the synthetic copulins in the experiments were like Beggin' Strips, fooling men into thinking there was a woman in the room, and to their addled minds the women's photos and voices seemed more appealing. Evidence of the whole sex/proximity/probability male brain thing, pure and simple.

It's fallacious reasoning to suppose that a female bereft of pheromones would necessarily fare poorly in relationships, because her very presence is enough to send men into slobbery-dog mode. She doesn't need chemical tricks and secret hypnotic weapons to win her battles. She can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you're a man. 'Cause she's a woman.

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