I knew a guy with atrocious armpit odor—so distinctive I could identify him in a crowded room. His funk made me hyperaware of my own scent, so I started trimming pit hair and masking with Axe-like sprays. The deodorant worked twelve hours until my natural musk mixed with the perfume, creating something worse than the original odor. I switched to unscented anti-perspirant, letting my natural musk display after hours. It seemed like a risk, but the results surprised me.

On dates wearing t-shirts, odor didn't escape the sleeve cuffs, so no problem. But post-sex, covered in sweat from exertion, I expected girls to cringe away when they laid their heads on my chest near my armpit. They never did. They stayed there, sometimes moving closer. One husky girl literally had her nose one inch from my pit and fell asleep in that position. If anything, she got closer. Women weren't hard of smelling—they were attracted to the natural male scent.

I'd been conditioned to think my musk was foul and needed hiding, but experience proved otherwise. Natural male odor is probably a strong attractant. Whenever large corporations push you to "solve" something with products—perfumes, razors, dress shoes, bar soap—doing the opposite often attracts more women. It attracts more natural women who aren't closet lesbians that hate the male body and its secretions. Authenticity beats manufactured cleanliness every time for genuine attraction.

My friend with the atrocious odor always had a pretty girl on his arm, and we never figured out how. Maybe his extreme musk signaled raw masculinity so strongly it overrode normal social conventions. Or maybe women were responding to his indifference to their judgment. Either way, his complete disregard for chemical masking worked in his favor, proving that sometimes breaking the hygiene rules gets better results than following them.