“Pheromones don’t have a smell or odour that is discernible, but humans have special detectors in their noses for pheromones,” Suzie Heumann and Dr Susan Campbell write in their Everything Great Sex Book. “We respond physiologically to another person’s pheromones, even if we cannot consciously smell them.”
So, someone must have noticed that these nerdy guys who hardly had time to groom and preen seemed to be getting all the girls. Now from sportsmen to actors, from journalists to traders, the carpeted jaw has made a comeback. Call it us tapping back into the natural, God-given primal instincts without even intending to.
The clean shave was for an era, just like the women’s perm was, and is now quickly making an exit too in favour of nviiri za nacho. People have noticed, without setting out to do so, that when you don’t block your pheromones with heavy relaxer chemicals or strong aftershave, the love scene is more active.
So, if bushy jaws are taking over Mars, the same pheromones are to blame for the natural hair movement sweeping over Venus. According to the authors, pheromones are in fact also responsible for women who live in close proximity having synchronised menstruation cycles. Women know what I am talking about. But then modernity started spitting out more outwardly polished versions of ourselves, but with little to naturally work with when it came to attracting and keeping the right spouses.
It became the in thing and hygienic trend to shave pubic hair until one looked and felt like a pre-teen down there. Chemicals straightened our hair and left it too greasy and often too filthy, for spouses to bury their noses in it – compared to one with often-washed, no-frills natural hair.
Our men started battling their grey hairs by shaving the entire head clean to look like young boys…And because pheromones continue to do their work long after connecting you to a compatible spouse, they should be jealously ‘watered’ even in marriage.
“Body temperature, skin conductance, heart rate, and blood pressure are just some of the functions that can be affected by our reactions to our partner’s pheromones,” Heumann and Campbell write. “Some men and women are greatly attracted to the smell of their partners’ underarms and hair.”
And the authors state that women taking oral contraceptives seem to be less responsive to pheromones. I guess all mammals have that secret buried in hair follicles, in common… Watch the other animals and see; the mating dance starts with sniffing each other’s fur.
Then we started messing around with those pheromone sources and chose ‘modernity’ over what suddenly became the ‘primitive’ way of life, and by extension messed up marriage and intimacy therein. Men started waxing their hairy chests, women started coming home with wet look hair and caked-on makeup, shaving became a morning ritual for both sexes, and the list goes on.
If you are a husband not allowed to touch your wife’s hair – even during sex – unless you have a death wish, say Amen.
carol@observer.ug