If it is Valentine’s Day, then many men resort to flowers or candy to show the women in their lives just how much they really care. For the bigger holidays such as birthdays or Christmas, men typically reach a bit deeper into their pockets for the larger ticket items such as jewelry or perfume. But the reason why so much perfume is sold in any given year has far more to do with hormones and the feelings created by certain scents than by the gift-giving rationale of men.
Perfumes, colognes, and scented oils have been part of human civilization since the time of the ancient Egyptians and beyond. Jars and vases filled with exotic fragrances have also been found in ancient Chinese burial sites. In fact, the use of perfumes has no exact starting date as its exact history is unknown. All that is truly known is that women and men have been using cologne and perfume to enhance their own scent for thousands of years will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
In any given year, 66% of men and 75% of women find themselves buying cologne or perfume during the course of a year. Researchers believe that part of the reason why women love receiving perfume (and also when men love giving perfume as a gift) is due to pheromones. Pheromones are hormones thought to stimulate sexual appetite or interest and they are triggered by scent.
So do women love perfume because it makes them want to have sex? No, actually the scent has a more dramatic effect upon men. While the effect is less pronounced in women, certain colognes worn by men have been known to produce a similar desire in women. Although a link between the scent of perfume and increased sexual desire has been found, researchers do not believe that it explains the desire to wear perfume on a daily basis.
In fact, most scientists believe that human pheromones and their impact upon our behavior has decreased over the years as we have become more advanced and civilized. While most scientists conclude that scent once played a rather large part in human mating habits, they believe that it has relatively little to do with sexual attraction in this day and age.
So then…why do women love perfume so much and why is it such a popular gift during the holidays? It actually seems to be due to the simple - continued below ...