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DUMBO Tour, Location 5

What does fitness smell like? We excrete more than just sweat, salt and bodily toxins. In addition to our unique genetic scent, our apocrine glands give off pheromones— odorants tied to sexuality— that we detect with our vomeronasal system, which is thought to operate more or less independently of the olfactory system. It is contested whether the vomeronasal system is an organ that developed entirely separately of the olfactory epithelium, but it most definitely bypasses the cognitive centers of the brain and goes straight to survival behaviors and emotions in the limbic system.

In the infamous book Perfume by Patrick Süskind, the main character Grenouille has an extraordinary sense of smell, but gives off no odor himself. He determines that he can rule the world by developing a perfume from the harvested scent of pubescent virgins. Clever fellow! While much research is being performed on isolating pheromones, no one has yet been successful in synthesizing these mysterious aphrodisiacs. The International Flavors and Fragrances company conducted what must have been a tremendously extensive study, as they concluded that women who are exposed to a heavy dosage of male musk on a regular basis develop shorter menstrual cycles, ovulate more frequently, and conceive more easily.

Using odor in conception is nothing new. The sixth century Greek obstetrician Aetios of Amida wrote, “To test whether or not a woman will conceive, they resort to these means: burn resin under the lower garments so that vapor enters the genital passage. If the odor passes through the body and reaches the mouth and nostrils, she will conceive. Otherwise, she is sterile.”

Pheromones can become embedded in clothing, linens and furniture. Researchers conducted a study in which a single woman sported t-shirts throughout the month, sinking her pheromones into their cotton fibers. A couple of these t-shirts were then given to male test subjects to sniff, who were asked a trick question about whether they thought the woman wearing t-shirt “A” was more attractive than the woman wearing t-shirt “B.” Although it was the same woman, the men consistently reported that one t-shirt had a more beautiful wearer, and this t-shirt was the one the woman wore while ovulating.

Think about how the next time you deposit your clothes at a thrift store, you are also donating your pheromones. Perhaps you have experienced this if you bought something at a vintage shop or borrowed a friend’s shirt. It smelled clean enough when you pulled it off the rack, but once you warmed it up against your skin you found yourself giving off someone else’s distinctive odor that did not belong to you.

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Smelling Committee

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gym , brooklyn , smell , art , new york , stinky , sweat , odor , smelling committee , dumbo , pheromone