BY ANNIE FREDRICKSON and LILLIAN DUNN

In print | March 8, 2007

This week, let’s take a page from Edward Packard (that would be the father of List Gallery curator and Swarthmore alum Andrea Packard) and Choose Our Own Adventure.

You are sitting in Kohlberg, enjoying your crossword when They walk in. Yes, you know whom we’re talking about in the gender-neutral third person plural. They are the one that inspires you to tame your unibrow, smack loudly on Sharples mints, and wear clean underwear in the hopes it may soon be exposed to natural light. They are your crush. And to your amazement, they are walking in your direction. Your palms sweat, your voice soars three octaves and your peripheral vision becomes hazy. Maybe you even vomit a little. Still, your crush marches resolutely on, and now - holiest of holies! - they are actually sitting down next to you, the scent of their shampoo filling the air. Now is the chance to make your admiration known. But what do you say to this Adonis/Adonis-ette?

If you say, “Hi” you can think of something better.

If you say, “Top of the morning!” skip to the next paragraph.

If you say, “Somebody better call God, cuz he’s missing an angel!” —well, that didn’t work for us either.

And if you say, “Wow, you smell GREAT,” you are immediately labeled a creepy pervert and avoided at all costs in the future. The End.

While we may compliment each other on our good looks, our good jokes, or our good grades (um), pointing out that your friend “smells like a pillowcase, but in a good way” is somehow too personal. The reasons for this phenomenon are complex. First of all, telling someone they smell delightful highlights the fact that you are close enough to smell them (and tilting closer every minute). But smelling someone doesn’t always require proximity; after all, some cologne-users/abusers make their presence known through both space and time, leaving a trail even a nose-less leper could follow. Perhaps it’s the primal nature of our response to scent that makes us uncomfortable. Smells have the power to evoke strong, uncontrolled memories in us. Studies have demonstrated the role of pheromones in our attraction to one another, indifference to one another, and when we get our periods. It’s not the moon, ladies. Blame that unexpected ankle-biting urge on the girl on birth control down the hall.

One of the studies on pheromones recently found that the pheromones that influence sexual attraction also convey information about our auto-immune systems, and that people choose partners with immune systems that offer defenses which complement their own, leading eventually to offspring with the optimal bio-defense system (and ability to breathe fire). Smells actually might be a legit way of determining compatibility, at least as far as progeny are concerned. Which got us thinking: in this world of ass implants, comb-overs, and pretending to know what “hegemony” means, we’re already doing everything we can to fake it. Why resort to artificial smells as well? Over the years we have found non-manufactured scents to be far more attractive. Off the top of our heads: a room with a window open, freshly ironed cloth, slightly oily hair, the smell of your arm after being in the sun, the way cigarette smoke smells on some people but not others, sun lotion, the inside of a leather purse, crayons, black walnuts, you.

When Lilli went abroad to Spain, her host señora told her that “you’re not a woman until you choose your signature perfume.” That’s a glamorous, old-world idea, but what’s the real fun in having “them” fall in love with your smell if it comes in a bottle? Instead, we find a sentiment expressed by the high school boyfriend of a friend to be more endearing: “If we were in a dark room full of people and you farted, I would find you and I would kiss you.” Out of the mouth of babes, ladies and gentlemen.

Annie and Lilli are seniors. You can reach them at afredri1@swarthmore.edu and ldunn1@swarthmore.edu.

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