Contributed by: ElyseRomano on Sunday, July 29 2012 @ 06:53 am
Last modified on
Now there's a headline I never thought I'd write...
Nobody likes dirty laundry. We all wish our mothers would still do our laundry for us. In fact, some of our mothers may actually still be doing laundry for us.
But now you may want to give Mom a break, because a new event is in town that promises to use your dirty laundry to find the love of your life. The Pheromone Party is a gathering of adventurous singles who spend an evening sniffing t-shirts and letting their noses lead them to the perfect mate. Sure, it sounds a little crazy, but so did online dating when it first came out.
Judith Prays created The Pheromone Party to capitalize on nature's most basic instincts. Why put the emphasis on attractive features, dancing skills, and witty conversation when you could date based on primal attraction switches? Cut out the middle man!
To score an invite to the get-together, interested singles must apply by sending a picture...of their armpit. Then participants wear a t-shirt to bed for three days in a row, without using deodorant or perfume. On the evening of the party, each shirt is placed in a Ziploc bag, assigned a number, and color-coded by gender.
Most parties involve drinks, dancing, and dj-ing, but at a Pheromone Party guests spend the evening sniffing each other's 3-day-old shirts and mulling over the scents like sommeliers tasting a new vintage. Instead of "oakey," "crisp," and "tannic," however, Pheromone Party attendees use descriptions like "hint of onion" and "strange scent of Play-Doh."
When a particular scent tickles their fancy, a photographer snaps the sniffer holding up the shirt in question and the photo is projected on a wall. If you spot your shirt on the wall, it's a clear invitation to introduce yourself to the lucky lad or lass who found your odor so appealing.
Yeah, it all sounds a little insane, but there might be some actual science to back it up. Genetic researchers have found that humans use scent to weed out genetic combinations that could result in weaker offspring, so it stands to reason that scent could also be used to pick out partners who are ideal genetic matches.
So far the parties are only held in New York and Los Angeles, but if success is anything to go by, they may be expanding soon. Judith Prays says that 12 of the 40 people invited to the first party hooked up, and that half of those hook ups turned into long-term relationships
Forget about following your heart. Now it's time to follow your nose.