Ever know any families who just smell great? You step into their house, and you can just sense something different, smell-wise. I had a buddy I grew up with, he was average looking, didn’t graduate from high school (failed the GED), but he and his family just naturally smelled great, and he was a lady magnet (regardless of their economic or social standing) like in the movies.
Any of you dopers experience something similar, despite the reputed lack of human pheromones? Obligatory Wiki cite.
I used to have a friend back in Jr. high that naturally smelled like ass. Yet HE was a total babe magnet.
And it wasn’t just me who thought that either. Me and my other buddies constantly gave him shit about it.
Women are strange though.
I had a women compliment me on the way that my bathroom smelled once. Her exact comment was: “I like your bathroom. It smellls like a man”
Keep in mind, this was back in my early twenties when I had not yet learned good housekeeping skills. So it’s a safe bet that when she smelled the bathroom; it had not been cleaned in at least a couple of months.
I remember a study about this, I don’t know where anymore, but certain people will stink to some but other people won’t be able to smell that stink. The theory was that it was to help compatable people find each other.
My friend Lee from high school. I gave him a hug once, and just… clung. He was wearing a leather jacket, and whatever he’d used for soap or cologne, plus just ‘him’ was intoxicating. Mm… Lee, you smelled good.
If it’s the study I’m thinking of it’s come to be known, I kid you not, as the “Stinky T-shirt Study.” I’m sure you can guess the methodolgy by that. According to the data, you are most attracted to someone whose immune system is different from yours.
Used to be in a Jazz Band in high school, and a couple of the girls who played saxaphone were on the soccer team. On one occasion, they had a soccer practice that overlapped with our Jazz band practice, and since the music building was next to the soccer field, they just went directly from the field to the band hall without showering or changing. The smell was… distracting for me. In a good way distracting. Well, I suppose not good in the sense that I was supposed to be concentrating more on playing trumpet and less on the saxaphone section.
My husband smells just wonderful, but in that subtle kind of way that you live with for years and years and one day realize that hey, he never smelled bad. Not once. And he didn’t use deodorant.
Whereas I had another friend who would get off work, go home, shower, meet me in a bar, and already he needed (IMO) another shower.
My favorite uncle was bipolar and once they got his meds balanced (not that they ever did, really) it changed his chemistry to the point that he didn’t smell like the same person anymore.
But my nose is awfully sensitive. I used to be able to tell where people in my office had been for lunch, but the worst thing was that I could come into the office in the morning and tell who was already there and who wasn’t there yet, by the smell. I thought it was the soap they used or the scent they wore until I realized that scent actually threw me off. (This happened only in the nonsmoking offices.)