Whiff of desperation may be costing the singletons dearly

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

IF you take the ‘y’ out of the boy, all you’re left with is ‘b-o’ – and as hormonal young fellas should be told, no amount of Lynx will mask the awful truth.

The problem is – and this might be the ultimate case of stating the obvious – body odour might be an impediment to their romantic prospects. And irony of ironies, single men are on average smellier than the married lads.

Be it poor hygiene or male desperation, researchers have found that single men not only have stronger body odour – but it is also something that can be reliably picked up by women.

For the study – published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology – scientists first instructed 91 men to work up a sweat in a T-shirt. They then cut out the armpits of the T-shirts and gave a selection to each of 82 women to rate for smell strength.

While the single men’s armpits came in at an average of three and a half out of six, the armpits of attached men were consistently less pungent, coming at three out of six.

That might not seem like a huge difference – but one-twelfth of a smell differential could represent the margin between success and failure.

And it may well have everything to do with our old friend, testosterone.

Because when men enter relationships, their testosterone levels drop. When their partner has children, it drops further.

But if they divorce, their testosterone levels rocket all over again.

And previous studies have determined that testosterone levels are linked to stronger body odour – which means that your love levels can be calculated from the smell out of your armpits.

Of course, there may be a more rational explanation that turns this theory on its head – that the reason you don’t have a love life, that Cupid’s arrow has given you a wide berth, is that there’s a terrible honk off you in the first place.

The unfortunate reality for teenagers at least is that there aren’t enough showers in the world to prevent them from smelling; ten minutes after dousing themselves in whatever passes as today’s version of Hai-Karate, that pungent pong is back with a vengeance.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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