Skipping showers before a date? What's behind 'pheromone maxxing' trend

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For most people, getting ready for a date means taking a shower and perhaps putting on deodorant or perfume. But some are doing the opposite, deliberately avoiding showers and scented products in the belief that preserving their natural body odor could make them more attractive.

The practice, known as "pheromone maxxing," has recently gained attention on social media, particularly among young men. The idea is to reduce showering and avoid deodorant, perfume and other fragranced products so that the body's natural scent remains as strong as possible.

The trend centers on pheromones, chemical signals released by an individual that trigger specific responses in other members of the same species. Pheromones are well established in many animals and can play an important role in mating behavior.

Female silkworm moths, for example, release a sex pheromone called bombykol that can attract males even at extremely low concentrations. Mice also use chemical cues in urine and other secretions to gather information about other animals, including their sex and reproductive status.

But do humans have anything comparable — a sex pheromone capable of making another person more attracted to them?

The famous sweaty T-shirt experiment

One study frequently cited in discussions about body odor and attraction was published in 1995.

In the experiment, male students wore T-shirts for two consecutive nights, after which female students were asked to smell and rate six shirts. Researchers also analyzed participants' major histocompatibility complex (MHC), genes that play a central role in immune function.

The study found that women tended to rate the body odor of men whose MHC genes differed from their own as more pleasant than that of men with more similar MHC genes.

The researchers concluded that their findings suggested MHC genes, or genes linked to them, could influence human mate choice. The study became popularly known as the "sweaty T-shirt experiment" and helped fuel the idea that humans might be able to detect genetic compatibility through smell.

Fathers recognize their children by smell

A 2024 study published in Physiology & Behavior examined whether fathers could recognize their children by body odor. The fathers were able to identify their own child's body odor at rates above chance and generally preferred their own child's odor. However, that preference declined as the child grew older.

The decline was associated with more advanced stages of puberty specifically among daughters. The researchers said the finding "supports the hypothesis of odor-mediated incest prevention in opposite-sex parent-child dyads."

That does not mean humans have been shown to possess sex pheromones comparable to those found in some animals.

Researchers writing about the recent "pheromone maxxing" trend say no chemical in humans has yet met the scientific criteria required to establish it as a pheromone.

Human body odor may influence how people perceive one another, and smell clearly plays a role in attraction and social relationships. But the evidence does not establish the existence of a specific human sex pheromone that can be "maximized" by avoiding showers.

This article from Kormedi.com, Korea’s top health care and medical portal, was translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.