Spray Away, Boys.

We’ve all seen those Axe commercials, and although chicks might not be banging down your door to get to your cologne doused torso right about now, there’s no denying that there’s just something about a man’s scent that really does it for women. I know, because, well, I’m a woman. But what is it about scent that attracts us to the opposite sex? For centuries, cologne has been used to mask odor, enhance one’s own scent, and attract positive attention. In very (VERY) ancient times, it was common for a woman to keep a peeled apple in the cozy nook of her sweaty underarm all the livelong day, and give the finished product to her lover. Sounds disgusting, doesn’t it? Well, many studies suggest that it is our natural scent that attracts the opposite sex. I’m not surprised- I used to have a boyfriend who really got a kick out of smelling the top of my head. Many perfumes and colognes claim to have pheromone enhancing chemicals, but the science of smell is a bit more complicated than that, according to scientists. Apparently, we all have what is called an MHC, or in super-science-speak, a major histocompatibility complex, which is linked to our immune system. The MHC is responsible for what we seek out scent-wise. We are programmed as humans to seek out individuals with MHC’s greatly different from our own, for reproductive purposes. When choosing colognes, we tend to gravitate toward smells that mimic our own MHC, so that we may broadcast our own scent to the opposite sex. Make sense? In theory, you could gather that this would mean that if a woman wearing a self-chosen perfume that smells just awful to you that you wouldn’t particularly like her natural scent, either- but I don’t know if we can jump to those conclusions just yet. The olfactory is a tricky thing. Your sense of smell is linked to brain functioning and many smells trigger specific reactions in the brain, so really, who knows what’s going on up there. But what we DO know, through a recent study, is that wearing cologne may have a psychological effect on the wearer. In a blind study, in which two groups of men sprayed on a substance, (one scented, one unscented), the men in the scented group displayed more confidence, and were even deemed “more attractive” to the women in the study, who were seated behind a glass wall. The women couldn’t even smell the cologne, yet they sensed the change in attitude, which in turn led to the attraction factor. So, from all angles, it looks like wearing a bit of the old smelly stuff really does work- even if it’s just in your head.
Here are some recent top sellers, according to Sephora and About.com :
Givenchy Play
Emporio Armani Aqua di Gio
Allure Pour Homme
HM by Hanae Mori
John Varvatos
L Eaud’ Issey pour homme


Sources:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/otodo/3576725694/
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12811377