The Beauty Girl

Our sense of smell shapes our memories, experiences, and perceptions of the world. Not only what we smell, but what we smell like ourselves is a significant part of our personal identity. My best friend has worn Thierry Mugler Alien for years, and I will forever associate the scent with our friendship and happiness. But what if you went on a date with a guy whose scent you couldn’t stand? Maybe not even a matter of cologne, it’s just his natural body odor. For many, that’d be a deal breaker. Enter the new frontier in dating: pheromone parties. Here’s the scoop: guests are asked to sleep in a t-shirt for three consecutive nights. After the third night, they freeze the shirt in a Ziploc bag to “lock in” the scent. Then, at the party, bags are marked male or female and guests go around smelling the bags. At the end of the night, guests pick the bag that they find smells most attractive, and they meet the person behind the scent. Crazy! Seems like an all-together kooky idea, but we think they’re on to something. If scent shapes our perceptions of one another so significantly, then pheromone parties seem, well, logical. Maybe sniff testing isn’t on your calendar this Valentine’s Day, but you can still play around with fragrance to make yourself a hot commodity. Here are a few date-night fragrances that we find magnetic: Read More