Spray and Tell: Now, Sexual Attraction Is Being Sold Out of a Can

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even dandelions and trees do it.

This much we know. But people? Do people do it?

Absolutely, says entrepreneur Joe Anders.

Don’t be silly, says organic chemist George Preti.

In question are pheromones, minute chemical secretions (odorless “smells,” if you will) released by the bodies of everything from earwigs to earls; secretions that influence the physical and/or social behavior of others of the same species.

In question in particular are human pheromones, and whether these airborne chemical messengers attract unwitting, even unwilling, members of the opposite sex.

While scientists have documented the fact that such chemical communication exists in hundreds of species from insects to apes, they have been generally unable to agree on whether or not human pheromones exist and, if they do, whether or not they influence attraction.

But if scientists are in a quandary, entrepreneurs have had no such reservations.

These days, you can buy pheromones in spray cans. In Los Angeles, the mail-order product, Bodywise, judiciously applied, will cause the most recalcitrant woman to swoon at the unworthy toes of a truly ugly man. Or so the ads say. Gold Attractant, it is said, sends a hitherto reluctant male suitor into an orbit of ecstasy.

Europe’s best-seller is Aeolus-7, named, perhaps significantly, after the Greek god of wind.

“Joe Anders” is a pseudonym. The local importer of Bodywise insists--vehemently and predictably--that his is “a legitimate enterprise. I believe in the product. I stand behind it. It’s just that I work with my brother in a very stuffy profession and we don’t want to make waves.”

Under “Anders,” though, or “Williams” or a variety of monikers, he has been a one-man tsunami, enraging feminists, exhorting the wimpy and making outrageous claims for Bodywise “in dozens of articles and on hundreds of radio and TV interviews.

“The biggest, I guess, was the old Tom Snyder TV show. Great fun. Snyder may or may not have believed in Bodywise. All I can tell you is that when the show was over, he took two cans.”

Snyder’s reaction to spray-can pheromones--Anders’ initial reaction too, for that matter--was typical: Sex attractants are a lot of hooey, but hey, what’s to lose? In 1981, on a trip to Amsterdam, Anders picked up a can, “just for fun.”

Anders, who says he was “quite shy then,” tried the spray on a train trip, during which he claims, “two Danish girls more or less forced their attentions on me.

“I said to myself, ‘Holy moly, this stuff really works!’ ” Back in the United States, he made overtures to the spray’s European manufacturer and arranged to import Bodywise.

“Only one of 16 men secretes enough (pheromone) on his own to have a worthwhile effect,” Anders claims. For the rest, the key ingredient, he says, is “androstenone, the natural male attractant in our spray.”

Competitors, he warns, use spurious substitutes: “I won’t B.S. you. If it has androstenone in it, it’s probably the real thing. If it’s androsten ol , it’s garbage.”

Gloria Joyce, who sells Attractant 10 (and its female equivalent, Gold Attractant), hasn’t a clue as to what’s in it, nor does she particularly care. The Beverly Hills businesswoman, who advertises Attractant for mail order in The Times among other publications, began to import the spray two years ago from Britain. “It seemed like it would be a lot of fun,” she says, “and it has been.

“Notice that our ad says, ‘Maybe it works, maybe not,’ ” Joyce says. “What do I know? I will tell you that it seems to work.”

Joyce admits that women’s pheromones (Gold Attractant) move slowly, if at all. “I’ve got tons of that stuff at home. Either the women didn’t fall for it or they didn’t need it.”

Pheromone sprays for women, such as Joyce markets, are not to be confused with Pheromone, a popular perfume by Marilyn Miglin. It “contains 179 all-natural ingredients,” says spokeswoman Pam Lassers: “flowers, oils, essences of bark, roots, wine resins . . . a formula Miglin found in an ancient Egyptian temple.” No pheromones? “No pheromones,” Lassers says, “but personally, I believe in them. Absolutely.”

Judging by sales of Attractant 10, more than a few men agree with Lassers.

“I get these guys coming in, telling me their stories. I have a 70-year-old regular who swears by it. He sprays it on his wife’s pillow--she’s in her 70s, too. I generally send it by mail, but he comes in to pick it up. He can’t wait.

“The letters? You wouldn’t believe them. And the ‘Friday nighters’ who drive miles to get a can, and the man who bought a dozen because he was leaving the country and didn’t want to take any chances.”

“You walk into a room full of strangers,” Joyce muses, “and you’re suddenly attracted to a man, someone who comes on just powerfully masculine. He hasn’t said a word. He’s not handsome--a Bogart, maybe, or an Onassis--but he’s got it. Why?

“Maybe it is pheromones. With Attractant 10, maybe it’s just the idea of pheromones. If it helps you feel more confident, great!

“What’s fascinating is our clientele . . . these really handsome guys come in. I tell them, ‘You don’t need this, you need a baseball bat.’ They smile, but they buy it anyway. It couldn’t hurt.”

It couldn’t help, either, in the opinion of George Preti, organic chemist with the Monell Chemical Sense Center, a nonprofit research institute in Philadelphia.

Preti’s experiments, conducted with biologist Winnifred B. Cutler, found a cause-and-effect relation between men’s underarm secretions and the regulation of women’s menstrual cycles to the length associated with highest fertility. As for sexual attractants, the chemist is considerably less sanguine.

“All you writers tend to simplify,” says Preti, often misquoted and consequently somewhat irascible. “You confuse primer and releaser pheromones.” Primers, he explains, the pheromones he works with, cause “slow behavioral change over a long period of time. Releasers cause a quick, instantaneous response.

“Popular writers tend to dwell on releasers because, one, they’re more exciting, more glamorous, and two, it’s a concept easier to understand. The concept of an aphrodisiac or sexual attractant has always been with us, but there’s no real evidence that such a thing exists.”

Spray-can pheromones? “A lot of baloney.” Androstenone and/or androstenol? “Both commercially available, which is how these people put them into sprays. Yes, they are human pheromones. They can also be isolated from swine carcasses.”

On a different day, Preti had been more magnanimous. “Pheromone effects are real in human beings,” he told the Washington Post, adding that “the anecdotal evidence suggests they even occur in the United States, where we’re all deodorized and perfumized.”

Indeed, it would seem ironic that the more “advanced” societies make almost a fetish out of soaping off the body’s natural--very possibly seductive--scents, only to apply perfumes and colognes to make themselves more seductive.

The lower orders, of course, are singularly derelict in personal hygiene, and all the richer in pheromones.

Jack Schultz, an entomologist at Pennsylvania State University who has done research with plants, tells of experiments in which small maples and poplars were damaged by hand. Nearby plants, unscathed, nevertheless “changed their chemistry,” either protectively or in sympathy--proving according to Schultz that plants communicate with each other pheromonically.

Schultz, something of a sage among the saplings, is convinced that if plants are affected by pheromones, surely people are too. “Human sexual attractants?” he says. “Why not?

“Look at it this way: Any animal that has only a limited number of opportunities to reproduce would benefit from any organizing principle that would up her chances.

“With females, it’s a matter of advertising--advertising estrus.

“Among humans, though,” Schultz conjectures, “the process gets swamped by other considerations, like the female’s need to be . . . extremely careful about who the male is. So a general broadcast of availability may not be the best tactic. Basically, it’s cultural filters versus instinct.”

Charles Hogue, on the other hand, thinks that humans have long since kicked the pheromone fix. The curator of entomology at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History says, “It’s like the coccyx--a vestigial organ. We’ve practically lost our tails, and we’ve practically lost our olfactory sensibilities.”

If so, it’s a shame, in a way, considering the wild-and-crazy sex lives of the insects, all pheromone-directed. Hogue tells a hundred tales about a million bugs “who read the chemical molecules in the air like we read a newspaper.”

Take lek, for instance, a pheromone males produce to attract other males. Not for homosexual reasons, or even for camaraderie, Hogue says, but simply to produce this big, brightly colored swarm. To the females, it’s “where the boys are.” Curious, the females approach--and the pheromonic objective is accomplished.

With butterflies, Hogue says, she pheromones him to come courting. He pheromones her to start mating. She pheromones him to get potent. And when it’s all said and done, he pheromones her to “get unattractive to other males,” to wipe off that lipstick, as it were. “We call it the ‘chemical chastity belt,’ ” Hogue says.

Take the black widow . . . but don’t take people, the entomologist says. “We may have had it once, but when we did, we weren’t human.”

Undeterred in his quest for shortcuts, though, man keeps searching, his hopes honed by the likes of Medex--Medical Express U.K. Ltd.--a British company that does research on pheromones and markets pheromone sprays.

“Androstenone definitely figures in a sex-attractant spray,” says marketing manager Greg Butcher on the phone from Surrey, England, “but it’s only one of almost 100 similar chemicals we’re looking at. Of course we synthesize them. . . .

“It’s a long, expensive process. It’s analyzing, synthesizing, years of trial and error. You cheat a little by studying the animal kingdom, where the responses are much more direct. Animal magnetism is no empty phrase.”

Speaking to men, Butcher advises: “If you feel fit, on top of the world, able to uproot trees, you’re probably manufacturing plenty of your own pheromones and don’t need ours. If you’re in a down cycle, they help, demonstrably, but not that quickly . . . They do make someone more attractive--as does a tan, or a new hairdo. Just an extra advantage.

“As for the points of secretion, we think armpits are overrated, just one of many places. With women, we’re looking, believe it or not, at their teardrops.

“When a woman cries, she’s not washing her eyeballs; there’s no need for that. What she’s doing is pouring out chemical signals, and if you don’t think they have an affect on men, you haven’t seen a woman cry lately.”

Finally, The Times’ own findings:

Bodywise costs $25 for a spray can about half as large as a canister of Raid. Attractant 10, more discreet, is $24.95 for a lipstick-sized container.

To about 60% of the subjects studied, neither attractant has a scent. (“Ability to smell pheromones is hereditary,” Preti says.) To the rest, Attractant 10 smells faintly like “licorice,” “musk,” “Chanel-y.” Bodywise reminds of “a men’s room,” “something dark and sexy,” “that stuff you clean the carpets with.”

When sprayed on willing colleagues, reaction from the opposite sex generally was nil or worse (admittedly a one-spray test; importers recommend at least a week’s trial). Two reactions, however, were noteworthy:

Sprayed with Bodywise, one man had “no reaction from the ladies but terrible dreams all night.”

Another, subtly soused with Attractant 10, reported this brief encounter during a cigarette break in a small room:

“This very pretty woman--someone I’ve seen in the building but never spoken to--began staring at me, or so I imagined. I may even have blushed.

“Then she spoke to me--for the first time in two years! ‘You know something?’ she said. ‘Your sweater’s on inside out.’ ”

Hey, it’s a start.