Men, we need to talk.
I understand dating is difficult right now. The apps are terrible, and everyone is confused. Nobody knows whether they’re dating, talking, hanging out, or participating in a six-month psychological experiment conducted primarily through Instagram Stories.
However, I have recently learned that some of you have responded to this crisis by no longer showering, and this is definitely not the answer.
“Pheromone-maxxing” is the latest addition to the internet’s ever-expanding dictionary of ways men can apparently optimize themselves into becoming irresistible to women. The idea is that by skipping showers, ditching deodorant, and sometimes rewearing sweaty clothes, men can preserve their natural musk (and the magical pheromones supposedly hiding inside it), thereby becoming biologically irresistible.
Some of the more extreme versions reportedly involve drinking urine.
Gentlemen.
We have lost the plot.
Of course, if any state was going to understand the impulse to optimize oneself into romantic perfection, it was going to be California.
Here in Los Angeles, we do not simply exist inside our bodies. We manage them like startups.
We monitor our sleep. Track our glucose. Cold plunge. Red-light. Supplement. Strength train. Count protein. Discuss cortisol with people we met 11 minutes ago. There is probably a man in Venice right now wearing a continuous glucose monitor while drinking an $18 smoothie and explaining mitochondrial function to a woman who desperately wishes she had ordered it to go.
Optimization is practically our municipal religion, so I understand how we got here.
Dating is uncertain. Attraction is mysterious. Rejection hurts. Then the internet comes along and says, “Hey, what if there were a system?”
Suddenly you don’t have to wonder whether she likes you. You just have to perfect your jawline, your haircut, your wardrobe, your workout, your text response time, and, apparently, the bacterial ecosystem flourishing beneath your armpits.
Except women are not combination locks, and there isn’t a sequence of inputs that makes us open.
While scent absolutely can be sexy, “natural scent” and “I haven’t showered since Tuesday” are not synonyms.
There is something intoxicating about the way a person you already desire smells. Anyone who has ever buried their face in somebody’s neck knows this. I’m currently obsessed with the way my situationship’s skin smells, and yes, that includes after jiu-jitsu. But then we get in the shower.
Here’s the important part:
I already want him.
I have never encountered a stranger emitting such extraordinary biological signals that I thought, “His shirt appears capable of standing independently, but my ovaries have spoken.”
Human attraction is messier than that.
It’s a smile. Eye contact. Humor. Kindness. Confidence. The way someone listens when you’re speaking instead of waiting for his opportunity to tell you about crypto. It’s chemistry, timing, and the inexplicable fact that one person’s face does absolutely nothing to you while another person’s makes your brain briefly forget how chairs work.
You cannot maxx that, and I think that’s what makes this trend less disgusting and more sad.
Underneath all these increasingly elaborate strategies for becoming desirable seems to be a generation of men desperately asking the same question humans have always asked:
How do I make someone want me?
I wish there were a hack, but the answer may be horrifyingly analog.
Take a shower.
Put on deodorant.
Wear a clean shirt.
Leave your house. Explore LA. Talk to a woman.
Not as a target. Not as a demographic whose preferences you have reverse-engineered from TikTok. Talk to her like she’s a strange, funny, complicated person you might enjoy knowing.
Ask her something and listen to the answer. Then, and I realize I am proposing something radical here, ask a follow-up question.
Make her laugh.
Let her make you laugh.
Risk being awkward, risk being rejected, and if you’re lucky, eventually somebody will get close enough to put her face against your neck.
Then you can find out whether she likes how you smell.
Los Angeles already has enough strange aromas. We have hot asphalt, wildfire smoke, ocean air, dog urine on sidewalks, and whatever is happening inside the parking garage at Whole Foods.
We do not need sexually frustrated men adding artisanal body odor to the ecosystem.
You don’t need to pheromone-maxx.
You need to shower and let a woman hug you.
Mary Kay Holmes is a Los Angeles writer covering dating, relationships and the increasingly absurd business of being a person.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
