If you’re near the end of Week 2 of your cycle—when ovulation occurs—you won’t need pricey perfume to get a man to notice you. When guys get a whiff of your natural scent, they get an automatic libido boost. That’s the news from a research team out of Florida State University who asked male volunteers to sniff t-shirts worn for three consecutive days by women in different phases of their menstrual cycle who were asked to go au naturel. Men who sniffed t-shirts worn by ovulating women had higher levels of testosterone—a hormone that revs up sexual thoughts and sensations—than men who sniffed t-shirts worn by women who weren’t ovulating and control t-shirts that weren’t worn by anyone. What’s more, when asked to rate how pleasant the t-shirt scents were, the men consistently preferred the scent of those worn by ovulating women over the others. This makes perfect evolutionary sense, the researcher say: during ovulation, your body sends out signals to males through chemicals in your sweat telling them that you’re fertile.
[photo: Plindberg]
