Why Some Teen Boys Are Skipping Showers To Attract Girls

Of all the questionable advice pinging around social media platforms, this one really stinks—literally. A trend called “pheromone maxxing” is teaching teens, mostly boys, that the best way to find romantic success is by enhancing the perception of their pheromones. The trend’s main strategies include skipping showers or using so-called pheromone cologne.

Following this advice can lead to medical issues, social challenges, and negative mental health outcomes for teens. Here’s what parents need to know about this social media trend and how best to address it at home.

What Is “Pheromone Maxxing”—And How Did It Trend?

If the phrase sounds familiar, it is likely because of its suffix. On social media, “maxxing” refers to a specific set of strategies meant to enhance something. It began with “looksmaxxing,” a trend that provided beauty advice to both boys and girls on everything from diets and gym exercises to surgeries and self-harm. It quickly gave birth to a variety of “maxxing” subcategories—creating increasingly niche ways for teens to scrutinize themselves and their bodies.

For boys, this includes “auramaxxing” (strategies to improve social standing), “smellmaxxing” (using cologne to attract women), “moneymaxxing” (ways to make money to attract women), “dickmaxxing” (strategies to enhance the length or girth of the penis), “testosterone maxxing” (naturally or pharmaceutically increasing testosterone in the body) and “starve maxxing” (restricting diet to lose weight). Now pheromone maxxing joins the list. The term refers to strategies that claim to enhance the natural production of pheromones. Most popular among them are not showering or using body oils and sprays that claim to contain human pheromones. 

Some trends are taken more seriously than others. Testosterone maxxing, for example, has an avid following of users who swear by trend’s top tips and share personal success stories. Scroll through pheromone maxxing content, however, and you will find a lot of content making fun of the concept.

While most older teens seem to consider it a joke, there’s a small contingent who seem to be taking this advice seriously. Best known among them is TikTok user @fluffdumpster. He has taken the concept of pheromone maxxing to the extreme by claiming to not shower for months and refusing to let anyone wash his laundry. In one video, he’s wearing a shirt that reads, “I’m not stinky, I’m pheromone maxxing.”

It is unclear whether this influencer actually believes in the practice or is simply rage-baiting, but past social media ‘joke’ trends have turned harmful. “Bone smashing” or the practice of repeatedly hitting the jaw bone with a hammer to develop a more defined jaw, for example, started as an online joke. However, the sarcasm was lost on younger social media users who claimed to attempt it. Considering that 40% of children between the ages of 8-12 use social media, it’s possible that younger children may be similarly influenced by other kinds of viral trends like pheromone maxxing.

While severely unhygienic content might be disregarded by most social media users, other content creators and their audiences take less extreme versions of pheromone maxxing seriously.

“Usually I like to not shower for three days before seeing a girl,” an adolescent boy says in a video posted recently—which already has more than 200,000 views to date. “Then I shower and then wear the same shirt I was wearing. So what it does is [it] gives off this halo effect of pheromones. Because girls like the smell of pheromones.” A different creator confidently explains that the top three compounds that can enhance a man’s pheromones include testosterone, trenbolone, and dihydroprogesterone—which are forms of synthetic hormones or anabolic steroids.

Yet another creator swears that pheromone cologne works, claiming that it’s “so masculine” that as soon as you put the cologne on “people are attracted to you.” The particular product he promotes in his video is a pheromone cologne called Toxically Masculine by Big Dog Labs priced at $79.99 and promises that its product’s aroma has “been studied for its effect on social perception.”

The world of pheromone cologne has taken off in the last two years. According to my research, there has been a 473% increase in Google searches of the term and a vast array of products are now sold on Amazon and other smaller online stores. Similar products targeting girls and women have seen similar growth.

The (Mis) Science Behind It

The claims behind pheromone maxxing don’t hold up to science. In fact, researchers have not come to a consensus on whether humans even have pheromones.

“The primary misunderstanding among influencers and adolescents regarding pheromones is the belief that humans produce and respond to pheromones…and that manipulating body odor or using commercial “pheromone” products can reliably enhance romantic or sexual attraction,” says Alreem Al-Nabti, MD, an assistant professor of dermatology at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Pheromones are chemical signals that animals of the same species typically use to communicate with one another. This includes communication between parents and offspring and mature animals of opposite sexes communicating attraction, mate choice, and trail following. For example, male house mice release pheromones that both attract females—triggering ovulation and puberty—and provoke aggression from rival males.

Tristram Wyatt, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University and one of the leading voices in pheromone research, wrote in a 2015 paper that he believes it is “probable” that humans have pheromones because we are mammals. But he says that there is not enough evidence available to support the popular claims that androstenone, androstenol, androstadienone and estratetraenol are pheromones. Even if research is one day able to prove that humans do have pheromones, Wyatt says humans have likely lost the ability to detect them. “The huge number of variable smelly molecules which give each of us our individual odour are not pheromones,” Wyatt clarified in an article for The Guardian.

While there has been ongoing research over the last ten years into human pheromones, the broader scientific community has still not been able to definitively confirm whether or not humans have pheromones.

“The notion that avoiding hygiene or using synthetic pheromone products will increase romantic success is not supported by reproducible scientific data,” Al-Nabti says.

The Health Toll

Engaging in pheromone maxxing can come at the cost of a teen’s health. Al-Nabti explains that adolescent boys who avoid showering for long periods, refrain from using soap, or do not use deodorant are at risk for:

• Increased body odor
• Overgrowth of skin bacteria
• Folliculitis (inflammation of hair follicles)
• Intertrigo (inflammation in folds of skin)
• Secondary skin infections

Al-Nabti also points out the contradictory nature of this pheromone maxxing recommendation. The teens who take it seriously are doing so in an attempt to increase their social standing or romantic success. But she says that poor hygiene is more likely to lead to negative social consequences, while regular hygiene supports both physical health and positive social interactions. She says teens should shower daily—or at least three times a week.

The pheromone colognes being marketed by phermone maxxing influencers also raises concerns for Al-Nabti who notes that ingredient lists for some of these products contain up to 16 different fragrance compounds including lavender oil, tea tree oil, lilial/lysmeral, phthalates, parabens, and well-known fragrance allergens like linalool and limonene. “These ingredients have been shown to be endocrine disruptors meaning they can affect [teens’] hormones and long term fertility,” she says.

The impact of engaging in maxxing culture extends beyond physical health concerns. There is also the possibility that boys who feel compelled to try these trends are also experiencing negative mental health repercussions from them.

“These looksmaxxing practices leverage a desire in young men to optimize themselves. This can be constructive, reflecting young men’s strength and resilience—an important aspect of good health and wellbeing,” says Krista Fisher, a research fellow at the Movember Institute of Men’s Health. “But when this desire comes from a place of feeling unworthy, lonely, or of restricting—rather than expanding—one’s expectations of what it means to be a man in today’s world, the health risks are real.”

The Slippery Slope of Maxxing Culture

Pheromone maxxing may, at first, just seem like the latest iteration of the age-old practice of young people trying to attract romantic partners—but beneath it lies something darker.

“Maxxing trends and content is one example of a new rise of masculinity-related content that’s becoming omnipresent in young men’s digital worlds,” Fisher says.

The origin of the term “looksmaxxing” came from online incel (involuntarily celibate) or “redpill” communities who self-identify as unattractive and unsuccessful in romantic relationships. This outlook skews their view of modern gender dynamics and leads them to direct anger and resentment towards women and girls. They believe that women romantically manipulate men for financial and social gain, and are only interested in dating a small subset of men who are abnormally attractive or wealthy. The term “looksmaxxing” was coined to reflect incels’ belief that the only way to game this manipulated system is to manipulate their own bodies.

At its core, maxxing in all its forms creates a painfully narrow and rigid definition of masculinity that warps young boys’ views of what it means to be a man in this world, especially in relation to the girls and women around them. It communicates to boys that there is a zero-tolerance policy for the inevitable awkward phase of puberty and adolescence. This puts intense pressure on them to leap from boyhood directly into manhood. For today’s boys, living in a society that prioritizes categorizing everything into a gender binary only emphasizes pressure on boys to not be perceived as feminine in any way. This leads them to search for and cling to anything that promises to enhance some element of their masculinity.

How To Talk to Your Teen About Maxxing Culture

If you observe your son fixating on maxxing trends, it can be an opportunity to get a deeper understanding of his perception of masculinity, manhood, and his place in the world.

Here’s how parents can best approach these conversations, according to Fisher:

• Identify which trends your son is drawn to, and use them as openings to talk about self-esteem and masculinity.
• Approach these conversations in a way that allows you as a caregiver to hear and learn from your son just as much as you want to teach and guide him. 
• Keep communication open by avoiding poking fun at these practices. Instead, ask your son questions that provide deeper insight into his thought processes. For instance, ask, “Why do you think this type of content is becoming more popular among young men?,” “Do you see this on your own feed?,” and “What would you want to improve about yourself and why?”
• Teach your son media literacy skills. Encourage him to understand that what he sees online isn’t always factually accurate. If he’s still invested in online spaces, help your son curate his feed around topics related to positive masculinity, establishing healthy habits, and building community.
• Encourage healthier habits by modeling positive health practices at home (this is especially important for fathers). Showing emotional expression, self-love, and compassion towards yourself can guide kids to do the same. Think about how you want your son to treat, talk to, and look after his own body.
• Foster self-acceptance by regularly affirming your son’s inherent value, and the value of other young men, irrespective of any kind of achievements, characteristics, and physical attributes. We want to teach our young men to believe their value and worth is tied to who they are at their core rather than to unattainable markers of masculine success. This equips and inspires boys to help other young men around them develop their own sense of self-acceptance.

Al-Nabti also adds that it’s important to emphasize to teens that “attraction and healthy relationships are multifactorial, involving personality, communication, and mutual respect—not just scent.”

Children have always had to navigate through a loud world that, at times, throws painful and confusing signals at them. Navigating them is part of the important process of finding their way into adulthood and figuring out who they want to be as adults. But social media algorithms that feed on kids’ insecurities have made this journey harder and more confusing. It might feel like there’s a new trend popping up every day that pulls at your son’s attention and attacks his self-worth. But parents still have extraordinary power and influence to help their sons navigate the confusing digital messaging onslaught found on their social media feeds. You may not be able to save your households from smelly experimental phases, but walking alongside your son with gentleness and understanding gives him the tools he needs to stay healthy in body and mind.