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You get to smell good and repel bugs? Score.
By Caithlin Pena — Last updated on Apr 17, 2023
Out of all the bug species in the animal kingdom, nothing is more hated than the dreaded blood-sucking, disease-carrying mosquito.
We're always looking for new ways to avoid being victims to those pesky little bugs.
But it turns out you don't have to cover yourself and everything around you in copious amounts of bug spray anymore. All you need is Victoria's Secret Bombshell perfume.
Before you think of us as ridiculous for saying that a beauty product can do such a thing, take a look at this study in the Journal of Insect Science.
A group of researchers from New Mexico University found that the sickeningly sweet and flowery fragrance of Victoria's Secret perfume is as effective as the chemical N, N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, or DEET, in repelling mosquitos. Since DEET is suspected of being detrimental to our health and environment, most people prefer DEET-free products.
Research assistant Stacy Rodriguez said that they expected the perfume to attract the mosquitos, but the opposite happened.
"It was interesting to see that the mosquitoes weren't actually attracted to the person that was wearing Victoria's Secret perfume — they were repelled by it," she said.
In case you still think the researchers are biased toward the expensive perfume, they used a variety of other beauty products and bug repellents in their tests by applying them to bare hands and seeing how mosquitos reacted.
Three products didn't work: Cutter Natural insect repellent, the Mosquito Skin patch, and Avon Skin So Soft Bug Guard. Ecosmart Organic Insect Repellent worked, but only for the first half hour.
The two most effective products? Avon Skin So Soft bath oil worked for at least two hours and Victoria's Secret Bombshell perfume for much longer than that.
The perfume "may provide a masking odor resulting in low mosquito attraction rates but over a shorter duration of time," said the researchers.
However, before you drop everything and run to the nearest Victoria's Secret, note that the researchers also said that "the concentration of perfume we used in this test was rather high and lower concentrations of the same fragrance might have different effects."
In short, they showered their bare hands in the perfume.
So is Victoria's Secret Bombshell or any other flowery scent a much more effective bug repellant than actual bug spray? Not really, though it may prove useful if you're out on a date on a particularly mosquito-filled night.
Besides, do you really want to invest that much money in a small bottle of perfume that you may or may not end up liking?
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Caithlin Pena is an editor and former contributor for YourTango. Her work has been featured on Thought Catalog, Huffington Post, Yahoo, Psych Central, and BRIDES.