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Speaker 1: From housetop works dot com. Hey there, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Molly and I'm Kristen. And Kristen. Um, I
Speaker 1: think it's my turn to share a slightly embarrassing anecdote
Speaker 1: with you. Yeah. So this um takes us back to
Speaker 1: sixth grade awkward time. Awkward time and uh, sixth grade
Speaker 1: camping trip and a bunch of girls kind of hanging
Speaker 1: out not talking to the boys, of course because that
Speaker 1: would be too awkward. And uh, I lent one of
Speaker 1: my friends a sweatshirt. She didn't have one and it
Speaker 1: was cold, and so I gave her the sweatshirt and
Speaker 1: she put it on. She's like, oh, it smells like you.
Speaker 1: And I sort of like like soap, like, you know,
Speaker 1: like a clean person, and she was like, no, like
Speaker 1: fake strawberries. Um, because at the time, I wore a
Speaker 1: a split sir that was strawberry flavored. Given to some
Speaker 1: body splash, it might have been I wore a lot
Speaker 1: of those in sixth grade. Two, Um, it was not.
Speaker 1: The higher scale body splash has put out by such
Speaker 1: um brands as Victoria's Secret or you know, Body Shop
Speaker 1: is more like a you know, like a kid's body
Speaker 1: spray that smelt like strawberries. And at that point I
Speaker 1: stopped wearing it because I didn't want to smell like
Speaker 1: fake strawberries. You just smell like melted lollipop. So I
Speaker 1: think she meant it smelled like sugar. And uh, that
Speaker 1: was far of my first um introduction to the fact
Speaker 1: that perfume is a distinctive thing that can mark your
Speaker 1: scent in the world, and I did not want to
Speaker 1: smell like fake fruit. Yeah. I think everyone has had
Speaker 1: some kind of experience where they put on a scent
Speaker 1: that just turns somebody off, whether that Sky Girl whoever.
Speaker 1: Because yeah, I mean with perfume, you either like it
Speaker 1: or you hate it. Yeah, but it did make me
Speaker 1: question if that's why I wasn't talking to the boys
Speaker 1: on that sixth grade field trip that they weren't into
Speaker 1: strawberry lollipop, went into strawberry Lolli pops. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's good to learn that lesson early because as we
Speaker 1: learned in researching this question, and does perfume make you
Speaker 1: more attractive? It basically does, right, um. But I think
Speaker 1: before we go any further, we have to point out
Speaker 1: that there is no scientific evidence that perfume can have
Speaker 1: some kind of aphrodisiac effect. I love those perfumes that
Speaker 1: are advertised to have some kind of creepy animal hormone
Speaker 1: in them that's supposed to make someone of the opposite
Speaker 1: sex or whoever you want, um flock to you. Yes,
Speaker 1: as a portrayed in the movie Anchorman, Yes we'll. Even
Speaker 1: though there's no such thing as an aphrodisiac perfume, there
Speaker 1: is a definite connection between scent and attraction, especially for women,
Speaker 1: because women actually have slightly more fine tuned senses of
Speaker 1: smell than men, and some researchers think that this is
Speaker 1: all part of are animalistic mating rituals. Tell me more
Speaker 1: in need, there was a study conducted at the University
Speaker 1: of Lusine testing whether or not women could be attracted
Speaker 1: solely by scent and sort of how how all of
Speaker 1: that works. And what they did was they gave men
Speaker 1: a single T shirt to wear, and they asked them,
Speaker 1: while they were wearing it for an extended period of time,
Speaker 1: to not use any sort of scented soaps or deodorants
Speaker 1: or cologne so that they could just get fully absorbed
Speaker 1: with their natural body odors. Delicious, right, So then they
Speaker 1: gave the women just the shirts, no pictures of the
Speaker 1: men or anything like that. They just gave the women
Speaker 1: the shirts to smell. And they found that the sense
Speaker 1: that the women were most attracted to correlated with the
Speaker 1: men who were the most genetically dissimilar from them. And
Speaker 1: they think that it's because women are biologically attuned toiffing
Speaker 1: out men who are more genetically different so that they
Speaker 1: can have more successful offspring. Interesting because that is completely
Speaker 1: counter to how perfume is marketed to women. Basically, what
Speaker 1: Kristen saying is that women just need the natural scent
Speaker 1: of about, you know, if there's gonna be reproductive success.
Speaker 1: But women are told and have been told throughout history,
Speaker 1: which we'll go over that, um, they need perfume to
Speaker 1: be attractive to men at all, I guess because men
Speaker 1: don't have those supersensors and can't tell for themselves who
Speaker 1: they need to mate with. I guess. So well, all right,
Speaker 1: so Molly, why don't we talk about what perfume is exactly?
Speaker 1: We know that it's usually a liquid. You spray it
Speaker 1: on you. But what is inside of it that makes
Speaker 1: it smell so delicious or revolting to some people. It's
Speaker 1: got alcohol, water and molecules would evaporate a room temperature,
Speaker 1: and that's it. Yeah. The molecules are what provide the
Speaker 1: smell um and as you may know, they're sort of
Speaker 1: different levels of how much smell you're going to get
Speaker 1: in a bottle. Right. Uh, the most concentrated amount of
Speaker 1: perfume oil is going to be referred to as perfume, okay,
Speaker 1: and then it goes down to oda, cologne and body
Speaker 1: sprays like your strawberry body sprays that have the least
Speaker 1: amount of perfume oil. So that's why you have the
Speaker 1: different designations of um like perfume. Ode to part from
Speaker 1: I am, I do not speak French, Milly. I feel
Speaker 1: kind of silly trying. I'm really enjoying try and do this,
Speaker 1: but um, the point is, just because you're wearing a
Speaker 1: perfume doesn't mean you're wearing like the cheap stuff, the
Speaker 1: stuff with less concentration in it. That's actually what you
Speaker 1: have to do to kind of get the actual good
Speaker 1: smell out of all these molecules. Yeah, because perfume is
Speaker 1: designed to release in different stages. First, you have the uh,
Speaker 1: you've got the top notes that will evaporate in the
Speaker 1: first fifteen minutes, like when you first spray some perfume
Speaker 1: and you immediately smell yourself that those are the top
Speaker 1: notes being released. And then after three to four hours,
Speaker 1: the heart notes, those those deeper, deeper molecules are then released.
Speaker 1: And then finally you've got the bass notes that will
Speaker 1: stick around after five to eight hours of application, that
Speaker 1: are really the essence of the perfume. That's the stuff.
Speaker 1: It's just it's going to stick around on your on
Speaker 1: your sweatshirt. Yeah. And so the next time you get
Speaker 1: a boll perfume, treat it like a wine and impress
Speaker 1: all your friends by talking about bass notes and heart notes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I love the hard notes in your your new cologne. Um.
Speaker 1: But one thing that I thought was interesting, Mollie, was
Speaker 1: that after the top notes evaporate, perfume smells the same
Speaker 1: on everybody. Yeah. That's kind of interesting, Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: thought that we picked different perfumes because you know, they
Speaker 1: they'll smell different. My perfume will smell differently on you.
Speaker 1: But maybe it's just because our sense of smell is different,
Speaker 1: not necessarily the way the perfume is released. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: have been looking at the psychology of why women even
Speaker 1: wear perfume, So there is this question of whether the
Speaker 1: perfume like is kind of genetically ingrained with odor receptors
Speaker 1: or if it's more you know, you start to learn
Speaker 1: what smells good to you. Because their scent is so individualized,
Speaker 1: there's no one scent that researchers have been able to
Speaker 1: find that every culture enjoys. So let's just talk about
Speaker 1: maybe the differences between why men and women might wear perfume.
Speaker 1: According to the book The Scent of Desire, Discovering Our
Speaker 1: Enigmatic Sense of Smell. Um, men wear cologne to attract women.
Speaker 1: If anyone has ever seen a commercial for ax body spray,
Speaker 1: I think that marketers have definitely tapped into a to
Speaker 1: that to that reason behind it. And then older men
Speaker 1: supposedly do it out of gratitude to the women who
Speaker 1: gave them their cologne, which okay, I guess as long
Speaker 1: as they like it beforehand. But women, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: UM where it for a little bit different reasons. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: women in their twenties like me and Molly are inspired
Speaker 1: by the media to where we see Jessica Simpson or
Speaker 1: Britney Spears or insert your favorite pop icon advertising different
Speaker 1: types of perfumes and we're like, oh, well, pretty Spears,
Speaker 1: where's that kind of her? Female do it too? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's why the last time people want
Speaker 1: to emulate all of Britney's behavior. But it's an idea,
Speaker 1: but maybe some people like it. But by our forties,
Speaker 1: supposedly women are wearing fragrances just because we like it.
Speaker 1: We found something for me. It is Chanelle Chance that
Speaker 1: we like. Even though I'm not forty, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: ahead of my time. Um. And then by sixty women
Speaker 1: where the things that they think other people like, usually
Speaker 1: like their daughters or other family members really enjoy. But
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't always that way. Kristen, I was
Speaker 1: reading a really interesting article in the journal pop Culture
Speaker 1: that kind of evaluated perfume over time and how it's
Speaker 1: been marketed to women at different times. And um, it
Speaker 1: was talking about how in the nineteenth century, when women
Speaker 1: were very much living, um, in a domestic sphere, serving husbands,
Speaker 1: raising children. Um, you had to be very modest and
Speaker 1: you couldn't wear much of a sent at all. It
Speaker 1: was sort of associated with prostitutes to be wearing a
Speaker 1: cent And it wasn't until the nineteen forties when um,
Speaker 1: you know, the men went off to Warren had pin
Speaker 1: ups of girls that um, it was kind of a
Speaker 1: good thing in society to be uh an alluring female,
Speaker 1: and so that was why it started to become more
Speaker 1: and more acceptable that you could wear perfume to allure
Speaker 1: a man. Well, that makes sense because almost any perfume
Speaker 1: that you'll see has some element of sex in it.
Speaker 1: Either the woman just has a come hither look in
Speaker 1: her eyes, or she's rubbing up on another man or something.
Speaker 1: There's a very sensual aspect to perfume and marketing, probably
Speaker 1: because it can become sort of a part of your identity.
Speaker 1: But you know, in the nineteen fifties things haven't progressed
Speaker 1: for women that much. Your identity is still you know,
Speaker 1: as a good housewife. So all the ads of that
Speaker 1: time we're just about like this perfume will please your
Speaker 1: man where it and men had none of those responsibilities.
Speaker 1: And then it's not until the nineteen seventies when we've
Speaker 1: got a lot of um, women's live feminist stuff going on,
Speaker 1: that perfume became kind of a lifestyle choice. You can
Speaker 1: wear this because you know you're making a choice for
Speaker 1: you how you want to smell interesting. Um. Well, it's
Speaker 1: kind of funny that this marketing is really just linked
Speaker 1: to attraction and sexuality and all of that, because some
Speaker 1: psychologists think that deodorant and perfume and all of these
Speaker 1: things that were supposedly need to have to make ourselves
Speaker 1: look and feel more attractive, has diminished women's capabilities of
Speaker 1: sniffing out a good mate. Oh dear, Yeah, so maybe
Speaker 1: we're actually shooting ourselves on in the foot by dausing you,
Speaker 1: by shooting ourselves with perfume exactly, Molly, So you know,
Speaker 1: think twice before you're putting on the perfume. Don't a
Speaker 1: scare away potential mates. Yeah, but I will give a
Speaker 1: slight tip to all our mothers out there. I was
Speaker 1: reading that, Um, if your favorite perfume is one that's
Speaker 1: very similar to one your mom used to wear, that
Speaker 1: is because you know, sense do bring back emotions, and
Speaker 1: women often choose to smell like their mothers to bring back,
Speaker 1: you know, the presence of their mother, even when they're
Speaker 1: not there, right, Molly. And just like your friend who
Speaker 1: knew you in sixth grade as her friend who smelled
Speaker 1: like frosted strawberries, um, it really does stick around with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm always going to be known as the strawberry Girl.
Speaker 1: Too bad, Molly Ben. But if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about smells and how perfume works, then head on
Speaker 1: over to how stuff works dot com. And if you
Speaker 1: have any questions or comments for me or Molly, you
Speaker 1: can email us at mom stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
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