B-BOYS AND B-GIRLS ACROSS THE GLOBE! AND I QUOTE :)
OLFACTORY PREFERENCES
In human beings as in other animals, many olfactory preferences are the fruit of personal experience but there probably exists also some innate predispositions that are the fruit of a genetic olfactory inheritance.
This can be seen by observing the facial expressions of new born babies which are made to smell various test odors.
Moreover, the state of health and the state of mind of the persons provokes changes in their appreciation of smell. The smells of heavy foods will delight a hungry man but will give nausea to one afflicted by headache or fever.
In the case of pheromones, being perfumer, I have noticed the rather widespread existence a phenomenon known as “specific anosmy”. Some persons difficultly perceive the scent of Musks (men) and of Ambergris (women).
It has been shown that anosmy (absence of olfactory perception) specific to certain human corporeal smells is developed in the males (for androstenone) after the age of puberty, while the perception of the same molecule becomes more acute after this age in females.
Specific anosmy assesses the incapacity to smell an aromatic molecule in the dilutions in which it is normally perceived, but does not assess the absence of "prime effect" (effect on the endocrine system), on these very persons. If on the contrary specific anosmy to certain pheromones was accompanied by the absence of prime effect, their anosmy would be a way for these persons to protect their organism when the stimulus provoked could be harmful to them.
Peoples reactions to these particular pheromones (acid metyl-exenoic, ethylheptanoico acid etc), just like the reaction to natural pheromones of perfumery (Civet, castoreum etc) can be either of real liking or of deep disgust, without half way through. Strangely the same products disliked by most (civet, Castoreum) render all perfumes that contain them more attractive than those without to the general public.
Axillary (armpit) smell in humans, being pheromones, provoke on others physiological effects (prime effects), that are visceral and little compatible with social interactions of civilized life, which are situated more on the mental level than on the physical one.
Therefore, body smells are judged negatively. This judgment is acquired with the time by the persons, when they grow assimilating the patrimony of their cultural values, by personal experience when reaching the age (with puberty) of being affected by the physiological effects of other people's pheromones (and also to influence the others with their own), and lastly by reaching a stage in life in which the other people's judgment becomes of utmost importance for the proper survival (sentimental and professional life).
The use of perfumes is common to all civilizations and can be traced in part to the need to eliminate the body smells (all natural aromatic molecules are bactericidal) in order to lead a civilized social life, but also in the desire to "spiritualize" one’s own individual smell. Our primary pheromone (axillary) smell remain anyway with the use of perfumes, but it is not perceived negatively because it is the degradation of the prime pheromones caused by the bacteria of the skin that produces the typical armpit scent.
The other instrument to reduce body smells common to many traditional civilizations is axillary and circumgenita depilation, still practiced in all Africa and all over the Muslim world, as well as in the Jewish culture
MAKE SOME NOISE 4 THE CLASS OF THE NEW GENERATION IS U! R U READY!?
HUMBLE CALLEN BOWE :)
