To be loved is to be smelled, at least according to the manosphere. In the newest internet trend, young men are “pheromonemaxxing,” opting to forgo hygiene rituals to emphasize natural body odor and attract mates. The science behind human pheromones, however, is wishy-washy at best, and maximizing odor may also be putting your love life in a funk.
Pheromones are not all the same
Similar to the looksmaxxing trend, pheromonemaxxing is based on the idea that “natural body odor may contain chemicals that influence attraction” and that a person’s scent could make them “more appealing to a potential mate,” said NBC News. Partaking in the trend involves “ditching deodorant, skipping showers” and in a gross escalation for the most committed, “drinking their own urine to ‘sweat out toxins,’” said Vice. The goal is “amplifying a ‘natural musk’ that allegedly contains pheromones that make you biologically irresistible.”
A pheromone is a “chemical messenger made inside the body of one member of a species” that is “secreted or excreted and reliably produces a response in another member of that same species,” said Samuel Cornell, a research fellow in public health at the University of Queensland, and Rob Brooks, a professor of evolution at the University of New South Wales, at The Conversation. But while some pheromones are for the purpose of attracting mates, many are not sexual. For example, “alarm pheromones might warn others about danger, and food trail pheromones might inform colleagues about where food is located,” said Forbes.
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Sex pheromones in some animals do attract mates, but pheromonemaxxing relies on the belief that humans are “like ants, moths, mice and other animals known to secrete pheromones,” said Forbes. Unfortunately, human mating is far more complex.
Some research has found that people are “unconsciously drawn to partners whose immune profile differs from their own,” but it is not a guarantee, as research has also found that hormonal birth control “appears to completely reverse” the preference, said Vice. The studies with these conclusions have not held up over time and may be victims of publication bias.
To have or not to have pheromones
Scientists have yet to find conclusive evidence about whether humans have or are able to detect pheromones. The chemicals require a biological method to be received. In many animals, “that job falls to the vomeronasal organ, a small structure in the nasal cavity wired to a dedicated processing station in the brain called the accessory olfactory bulb,” said Cornell and Brooks.
While “some humans have a vomeronasal pit,” from birth there are “no nerve cells in it connecting to the brain and no accessory olfactory bulb for a signal to report to,” said Cornell and Brooks. There has also never been a chemical in humans that “meets the criteria to be labeled a pheromone.”
However, just because we haven’t found any doesn’t mean we don’t have pheromones. Because other mammals can have pheromones, it is “highly likely that humans do too,” said Tristram Wyatt, a senior research fellow in biology at the University of Oxford, to IFL Science. One of the clues is the “smells we give off as we grow up and go through puberty.”
Even if humans do have pheromones, thumbing your nose at showering does not mean you can “select for what remains on your body and what doesn’t,” said Forbes. It is “hard to selectively remain dirty,” as “everything that your body has accumulated throughout the day and night” stays there, which could include “alarm pheromones and food trail pheromones if they do exist on humans.”
It is ultimately important not to “confuse sensing and liking different smells with detecting and being affected by pheromones,” said Forbes. Sweat is “just a mix of 99% water, electrolytes (salts) and then tiny amounts of urea, ammonia and other compounds.” The mixture, said Cornell and Brooks, can become a “cozy breeding ground for bacteria, and that will start to cause a stench.”
