Have you been having a hard time in the man department? Have you tried everything, including sending Instant Messages casually mentioning the fact that you’re filled with Cadbury Creme, volunteering to be tied up in licorice, and rubbing a dozen glazed doughnuts all over your body, to no avail? Shaan Hathiramani and Raj Hathiramani are here to help. The brothers recently left gigs at Citadel to found a perfume company, and it turns out you’re actually on the right track with the food-as-bait but your approach could use some refining.

Instead of lubing yourself up with glaze or fashioning a bikini out of pumpkin pie, try dousing yourself in the Hathiramanis line of scents.

Eau Flirt, an electric-green elixir that sells for $12 to $98, is billed by its manufacturer, the company Harvey Prince, as “the world’s first perfume clinically proven to make men flirt with women.” Inspired by an independent study conducted by the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago that found that men became sexually aroused when sniffing a combination of pumpkin pie and lavender, Eau Flirt is but one player in a longstanding category of fragrances marketed specifically as romantic attractants. Some are all natural; others say they contain pheromones. All of them claim to make the wearer irresistible. Eau Flirt doesn’t contain synthetics, but it uses ingredients like pumpkin, lavender and licorice, shown to increase penile blood flow. Researchers at the Chicago foundation asked men attached to a plethysmograph, a device measuring changes in volume in various parts of the body, to sniff 30 odors. All of the smells aroused them, with the combination of lavender and pumpkin pie having the greatest effect (increasing blood flow 40 percent), followed by doughnuts and black licorice (a 31.5 percent blood-flow increase).

Are we being doused with science or marketing hype? Perhaps both. “There’s really nothing that you can spray on and the opposite sex will fall for you,” said Dr. Johan Lundstrom, an assistant member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “It’s completely a placebo effect.” That doesn’t mean fragrances can’t be bewitching. At Barneys New York last week, Dr. Leslie B. Vosshall, a professor and head of the laboratory of neurogenetics and behavior at Rockefeller University, introduced a reporter to an array of provocative perfumes to underscore that smell can “put us in the mood like no other sense.” There are a number of variables. One man’s love potion is another man’s mood killer, since smell is closely tied to memory and emotion. So your reaction to a fragrance is mediated by your experience with it: the perfume of your first love, the aroma of your mother’s apple pie, the smell of the meat that gave you food poisoning.

Whether you need some assistance enticing potential pieces of ass or platonically wooing your boss into giving you a nice package come bonus time, we suggest giving it a shot.

Pumpkin Pie: Provocative Or Just Tasty [NYT]

Comments (25)

  1. Posted by Guest | July 18, 2011 at 6:35 PM

    can we get a dairy queen and cherry coke flavor. u00a0nn-W. Buffet

  2. Posted by BFrank | July 18, 2011 at 6:45 PM

    Hathiramini’s in stocks and the other hath is in CDs.

  3. Posted by Costanza | July 18, 2011 at 6:52 PM

    Is that… Pastrami?

  4. Posted by DSK | July 18, 2011 at 6:53 PM

    I can vouche for this shit!

  5. Posted by R_Dalio | July 18, 2011 at 7:00 PM

    Lavender is an opinion. Pumpkin pie is a fact.

  6. Posted by Ken Griffin | July 18, 2011 at 7:03 PM

    When the Hathiramani brothers approached me with a capsule of liquid, I was hesitant to take a sniff. However, after continuous prodding, I finally bent down and inhaled the sweat aroma. Bending upwards with one eye closed from irritation, I remarked, “This is impressive. This is very impressive. However, the scent of milk, ice cream, sugar, and dry ice is only half the battle.” nnI sat the brothers down, and gently relayed the following information. “It’s the exhaust from 200 miles of travel. It’s the courier who reeks of Swisher Sweets and pheromones. It’s the scent of perseverance that gets me in a tizzy. Bottle that and watch me flow.”nn-Ken “Fuck Your Crack, Sidewalk” Griffin

  7. Posted by Man Packing District | July 18, 2011 at 7:06 PM

    All you have to do is douse yourself in bacon grease and the mens will come a runnin!

  8. Posted by ExtraOrdinaryPopularDelusions | July 18, 2011 at 7:09 PM

    What, no curry jokes yet?

  9. Posted by Devil_Dog | July 18, 2011 at 7:15 PM

    The smell of napalm in the morning always gives me a rock-hard boner. That smell, you know… that gasoline smell…nn–Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore (Ret)

  10. Posted by Guest | July 18, 2011 at 7:20 PM

    guess you’re the only racist/painfully unfunny one here today?

  11. Posted by Guest | July 18, 2011 at 7:20 PM

    because we’re trying to attract Indian mother in-laws?

  12. Posted by Backdoor Bess | July 18, 2011 at 7:26 PM

    My legs are open just thinking about this………..nn~Maria

  13. Posted by in love with pmco avatar | July 18, 2011 at 7:28 PM

    PMCO if that stuff works on you, i would buy a gallonnn

  14. Posted by Guest | July 18, 2011 at 7:33 PM

    Someone needs to spritz a bit of this on Raj right before heads to the bighouse.

  15. Posted by Guest | July 18, 2011 at 7:48 PM

    Maybe they can sell some to their peep’s.nn-the one non-indian guyu00a0in theu00a0back-office

  16. Posted by Guesticles | July 18, 2011 at 7:54 PM
  17. Posted by Guest | July 18, 2011 at 7:55 PM

    My God, what is that smell? Oh. God no! it smells like, like a used diaper… filled with… Indian food. Oh,u00a0 Smells like a turd covered in burnt hair!. Smells like Bigfoot’s dick!

  18. Posted by Kenny Powers, MFCEO | July 18, 2011 at 8:03 PM

    Konichiwa, bitches. I already figured out how to bottle the scent of boner.

  19. Posted by Guest | July 18, 2011 at 8:08 PM

    why would a dude be turned on by another dude smelling like a boner?

  20. Posted by Clean Guy | July 18, 2011 at 8:16 PM

    Better Question……u00a0 Your’s Smells??

  21. Posted by Anonymous | July 18, 2011 at 8:27 PM

    Smells like… victory?

  22. Posted by Anonymous | July 18, 2011 at 8:29 PM

    Does this explain Nails’ thing with licorice?

  23. Posted by early hominid | July 18, 2011 at 8:57 PM

    No, but it explains Tuna Amobi’s popularity in Japan. u00a0

  24. Posted by Guest4 | July 19, 2011 at 3:50 AM

    Eau Flirt combines the Indian techniques of Kama Sutra & Tantric sex to “clinically increase penile blood flow”. nnGood for unattractive Indian men and even uglier Indian women.nnThis product was first tested by Anne-Dias Griffin on blue-eyed Ken griffin.

  25. Posted by citadel1 | July 19, 2011 at 12:35 PM

    They quit. Both were rising stars at the firm.

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