Just as it happened to all other red-blooded American males, my testerone went into steep ascension when I first saw Jacqueline Bisset in her celebrated wet T-shirt scene (The Deep, 1977).  Little did I know at the time, it ws because the gorgeous Jackie was ovulating.   At the sight of Her Loveliness, I made the mistake of supposing my erectile disfunction had ended because I wanted to have plain, unadorned sex with the goddess.   Now I know the truth, thanks to Saul Miller and his collaborators in their article published December 22, 2009 in Psychological Science.    PS is the source of all things worth knowing.

The study shows that when men smell T-shirts worn by women while ovulating, it triggers a surge in the sex hormone testosterone.  Researchers say it’s the first study to show that olfactory cues to a woman’s ovulation stimulate a biological response in men that affects mating behavior.

Men who smelled a T-shirt worn by a woman on her estimated day of ovulation responded with higher testosterone levels than men who smelled a T-shirt worn by a woman earlier or later in her cycle,” write researchers Saul L. Miller and Jon K. Maner of Florida State University.     To be sure, they were not sniffing downwind (or is it upwind?), Miller and Maner also had men smelling women’s T-shirts that had never been worn by anyone.  Such sniffings did not arouse the “mating instinct.”  According to these nostril masters, the findings confirm that human mating behavior may be influenced by some of the same sensory triggers found among animals from rodents to primates.

I find this very ennobling.   Prior to this wonderful, exculpatory news, I thought the mere sight of a super attractive Babe in a wet T-shirt was just debasing me with old-fashioned HORNINESS.   I feel much better knowing that what I wanted was to be the father of some woman’s child.  Why, it could have been any other ovulating woman in a T-shirt, not just the over-the-top Ms. Bisset.

Huh?!!!   Did I really just say that?