Secret to feeling sexy: It's all in the mind

The art of attraction
But that hasn't stopped other researchers from fighting the good fight. In 1986, research biologist Winnifred Cutler and George Preti, a chemist from the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a research institute in Philadelphia, published data showing that male sweat extracts secreted from sexually active men's armpits promote more fertile menstrual cycles.

Cutler went on to claim that in the same way that women who live together experience a synchronization of their periods, "women with unusually short or long menstrual cycles get closer-to-average cycles after regularly inhaling the male essence." (That essence, according to Cutler, is comprised of male hormones, sweat, and body odor. "You just walk into a male locker room," she told a reporter in 1998. "That's the odor.")

That scent isn't exactly a recipe for feeling like hot stuff. But further research — such as a study suggesting that women who applied armpit secretions donated by other women to their upper lips had sex more often — led Cutler to extrapolate that human pheromones attract members of the opposite sex.

Preti, who now questions some of his and Cutler's research methods and conclusions, is no longer associated with Cutler. Meanwhile, if her name sounds familiar, it may be because her pheromone potions, which include an "aftershave/cologne additive" for men and a "cosmetic fragrance additive" for women, are advertised in magazines and sold on her Web site. The prices: $99.50 and $98.50, respectively, for one sixth of an ounce.

Sensual scents Fragrances appeal to our most primitive, irrational sense — but some are sexier than others, says Kilian Hennessy, the perfumer behind by Kilian. Obsession for Women by Calvin Klein: "For me, it's the sexiest perfume ever made. It's a woody, ambery, green, animalistic, vanilla concentrate." Opium by Yves Saint Laurent: "It's similar to Obsession — they're orientals — but Opium is spicier and more floral." Issey Miyake L'Eau d'Issey: "One summer, when I was a teenager, I fell in love with an Italian girl who wore L'Eau, and so I always found it sexy afterward." Angel by Thierry Mugler: "It smells so young and sexy. You want to bite the neck of any girl who wears it." Classique by Jean Paul Gaultier: "The 'body bottle' immediately expresses the scent. It also smells very sexy." Nu by Yves Saint Laurent: "It never caught on in America, because its bottle looks like a hockey puck. But it's a fantastic woody incense." Love/don't be shy by Kilian: "It has marshmallow, orange flower, vanilla, and civet. It's sweet, but it doesn't smell innocent." — Lindsy Van Gelder

In case you're wondering, I've never heard of anyone experiencing any effects, positive or negative, from mail-order pheromones. Back in 1999, Roach tried them as part of research for an article in the online magazine Salon, and reported that people made more eye contact with her, but only because she was staring at them trying to discern if they felt uncontrollably drawn to her. That's not to suggest that William Shatner doesn't have a "high pheromone count." It's more likely, however, that what he really has is a healthy dose of ego. As we've been told by every self-help author, talk-show shrink, and platitudinous celebrity, the many portals to feeling sexy are accessible via a single key: self-confidence.

"It's all about knowing who you are, about owning yourself," says April Masini, author of "Think and Date Like a Man" (iUniverse), which essentially tells women to stop sabotaging themselves with needless self-loathing. "To any woman who walks into a room and feels too old or not sexy, I have three words: Camilla Parker Bowles," Masini says. "She wasn't as conventionally sexy as Princess Diana. But she got the prince."

Granted, Parker Bowles isn't everyone’s idea of a femme fatale. But the fact that Prince Charles held deeper affections for this relatively ordinary-looking woman than for the princess whose beauty and sex appeal were universally recognized and relentlessly celebrated serves as further proof that what Mom told us is true: namely, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Also, stand up straight. (Diana, for all her loveliness, never mastered that one.)

Sexiness is evanescent
The Unlikely Hot Girl, on the other hand, has the posture of a dancer even if she's zaftig, the smile of a beauty queen even if she has a space between her teeth, and, perhaps most importantly, a fashion sensibility that truly places sensibility over fashion. That is to say, she does not purchase clothes solely on the basis of having seen them on the body of a 16-year-old celebrity. She also, according to author and sexologist Yvonne K. Fulbright, doesn't ignore her flaws so much as embrace them.

"She recognizes that she's sexual and that there's no excuse for how she was made," says Fulbright, who's now an expert on CherryTV, a new video-based Web site focusing on women's sexuality and health. "She's good at channeling her energy to focus on desirable traits."

Moreover, says Fulbright, a lot of Unlikely Hot Girls have figured out how to resist the pervasive cultural message that being sexually attractive requires impersonating a stripper or a porn star. And on that front, their closest allies can be the very forces that less enlightened women live in fear of: age and wisdom.

Mary Roach suggests that the trick to feeling sexy is to tap into the freedom we can feel in a dark bedroom. "In this culture, what's hot is tits and youth," Roach says. "The majority of us don't have enough of one or the other, or either. That's why it’s easy to be sexy in a dark room. In your own mind you can be Jennifer Lopez. But when you walk into a bathroom with unflattering light, it makes you crumple. So perhaps the thing to do is focus on that feeling of having the lights out, of being anything you want to be, rather than thinking about how big your ass is."

That's an interesting angle, but most of us live chiefly in daylight (or, worse, under an unforgiving fluorescent glare), where flaws are relentlessly pointed out and commented upon with an eye toward correcting them. So how do we own our natural sexiness in a world that’s constantly selling us an artificial version of it? Self-confidence is great, but where does it get us in those moments when sexiness, like a name we can't summon at a cocktail party, has escaped our grasp? When our elaborate lingerie stares menacingly at us from the drawer; when we can't accept a lover's compliment; when we're convinced we've lost our looks; when we wish that the Unlikely Hot Girl would, for once, look in the mirror and consider the possibility that she's not all that hot — we need guidance.

What do we do? Perhaps we do nothing. The answer — insofar as there are answers to this fundamentally unsolvable puzzle — is to realize that sexiness, by its very nature, is evanescent. It makes appearances only on the grounds that it will soon disappear. Like a skilled flirt, it always backs down before we start to take its affections for granted. Like a wise teacher, it reminds us that true knowledge means knowing we'll never really know.

True appreciation, on the other hand, is an infinitely worthy goal. Most of us will never feel sexy all the time, or even most of the time. But there's something to be said for taking what we can get — and enjoying it while it lasts.

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