Eau De Vulva: Why Some Men Love the Scent of Pussy

Keith, 29, is telling me how his girlfriend’s pussy smells like heaven. “It just smells so sweet and pungent, but not in a bad way at all,” he explains. “It’s definitely an aphrodisiac. I like when I’m watching TV with her or just laying my head in her lap, and I catch a whiff. It’s so sweet and makes me feel good. Sometimes after sex, I can still smell her pussy on my dick, and I like it. It makes me feel like, ‘This is my pussy.’ Or: ‘This is the pussy I love,’ which inspires me to give it as much pleasure as I can.”

The conventional wisdom, of course, says that Keith is an outlier, a man all alone in his fondness for the eau de vulva. In fact, conventional wisdom says most men don’t like eating pussy because it too often smells like fish, weed, pennies, beef, bleach and/or kombucha. The thing is, that’s not exactly right. Namely: A lot of dudes love the scent of fish, weed, pennies, beef, bleach and/or kombucha — as well as all the other ways vaginal scents are described. Consider, for example, this testimony from a redditor named BiliousToad:

“Seriously, though. Sometimes I get a whiff of that intoxicating aroma from my girlfriend’s pussy, and it drives my testosterone though the roof. I caught her scent today, while lying in bed. Instant, throbbing boner. She gave me this coy smile, which just made me harder. I ended up pulling off her panties, flipping her over and burying my face in her pussy. I just feel that visceral, all-consuming desire when I get that scent.”

That all-consuming desire has to do with evolutionary psychology. “Vaginal secretions have many things in them, some carbohydrates, sugars, amino acids, proteins and other substances produced by the lactobacillus bacteria that lines the mucosa,” explains Jim Pfaus, a research neurobiologist with a specialty in sexual response. “They also contain small amounts of conjugated steroids, including estradiol, progesterone and a bunch of androgens. Sweat and saliva have a mix of similar chemicals. By ingesting them, we actually take them into our systems. Most mammalian males (and hetero humans) have an innate attraction to these chemicals, much the same way we’re attracted to the scent of a breast-fed baby’s head.

“But the mix also has a taste and smell, and that’s mostly what people who say they like the smell and like to go down on a woman are responding to. Some other natural scents gear us up in the same way, including vanilla, clove, cinnamon, etc. And because the olfactory system is so malleable, we can also associate neutral smells or even salient perfumes with sexual gratification (as we do the odor of vaginal mucous secretions) and come (literally and figuratively) to be attracted to those odors.”

Speaking of perfume, there’s enough of a market of guys who like the scent of the female genitalia that a German company bottled it. A rollerball containing 0.2 ounces of pussy-scented, the product description for “VULVA Original” promises:  

“The real erotifying vaginal scent of a desirable woman – VULVA Original is NOT a perfume, but the captivating intimate scent conserved as odorous substance, made to satisfy your own smelling pleasure. The precious organic substance is imbedded in a classy glas-phial, encased in an exclusive packaging. Because of the comfortable dosing feeder, you’re enabled to put tiniest amounts of the arousing fluid on the back of your hand. Right after a short amount of time the exuding irresistible smell of a seducing vagina intensifies your erotic fantasies and fires your minds eye. Smell and enjoy the intimate scent of a desirable woman. Anytime and anywhere. VULVA Original – worldwide unique. Also because it’s the only erotic product which doesn’t imitate. VULVA Original is real and suspect to supervision of strict int. terms of references. Health risks are excluded if you handle the product as predetermined.”

Not that it’s anywhere close to the real thing, at least according to this review:

“You will be disappointed with the smell. My coworkers agreed in general that it has ‘something’ that you can associate with a woman’s parts, but unless you are told so, you might not even make the association. But it could smell like… another animal’s parts. I wouldn’t know, but it does smell ‘kinky,’ and like a natural liquid could. Just not close enough to what I, or my coworkers have experienced.”

Which is why the most tried-and-true method of getting such a whiff is buying used panties — used apparel sex workers have been selling to generate income for about as long as the internet has been around.

That said, not all digital entrepreneurs selling sex online are willing to commodify their own potent juices. “I don’t like to give people my bodily fluids,” says phone sex operator and fetish clip producer Venus Babylon. “As a witch, they can be used in spells against you.”

I guess that’s just further testament to the power of these scented secretions.

---

Tierney Finster

Tierney Finster is a journalist, screenwriter, actor and model from Los Angeles, California. She is a contributing writer at MEL, specializing in love, sex, mental health, drugs, queer culture and the cannabis industry. She has written for publications such as Playboy, Purple, Dazed and Confused, Jezebel and Broadly and was the key researcher behind Sex On, HBO’s revival of its iconoclastic docu-series Real Sex.