Jenice Armstrong: Making scents of getting old

AS IF wrinkles, age spots, weight gain and going gray weren't enough to worry about, last week I learned one more thing that stinks about the aging process - and it's the smell.

As people pile on the years, they reportedly wind up smelling older.

Luckily, scientists have discovered a scent that can help hold Father Time at bay - or at least trick him into thinking you're younger than your years. The answer is right under your nose, so to speak. It's pink grapefruit.

Think of it as an olfactory Botox.

Or a facelift in a citrus rind.

Attention cougars: Take notes. Three years ago, researchers at the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, in Chicago, conducted a study that discovered that men perceive women doused in the scent of pink grapefruit as at least six years younger than their actual ages.

"Yes, pink grapefruit affects age perception," the foundation's head, Dr. Alan R. Hirsch, told me yesterday. "It reminds them of being a kid. You think something like cotton candy would work. We tested it and it didn't work."

How about bubble gum? That should knock a few years off. And if you follow that logic, so should baby food. Nothing like the scent of pureed peas to turn back the clock, right?

Jokes aside, scents are powerful. I know that whenever I catch a whiff of Carolina Herrera or Chanel No. 5, I start looking around for my mother.

Then, there are traditional scents such as lavender and rose that people tend to associate with older generations. A saleswoman at Crabtree & Evelyn, at Cherry Hill Mall, yesterday told me that a lot of younger customers automatically reject their numerous rose-scented products and gravitate instead toward more citrusy scents.

"Rose smells old lady; you associate that with grandma," explained Kumar Ramani, creator of a new anti-aging perfume called Ageless. (Available at Image Beauty stores in South Jersey.)

"I love rose, but that's the general perception," continued Ramani, head of the Harvey Prince Co. "We felt that if rose smelled 'old lady,' there had to be something that stood out as 'young lady.' "

Enter the crisp scent of pink grapefruit. Ageless, which sells for $120, has top notes of pink grapefruit, mango and pineapple before you start smelling jasmine and cherry blossom.

But does smelling like a tropical fruit salad really make men think you're younger?

Dr. Adrienne Denese, who has a youth-inspired scent available for sale on QVC called Beyond Ageless, has drunk the grapefruit-scented Kool-Aid, too. In pursuit of a young-smelling scent, she went the citrusy route as well.

"You will be perceived to be younger if you wear this younger fresh smell," she told me during a phone chat. "As we grow older, the sense of smell becomes dull. Older ladies will prefer a heavy, dark, warm floral scent. They cannot smell a lighter note, less intense, more citrusy, more fresh notes."

It may well be that since so many older women wear strong scents, we've come to associate that with aging. If you're a young man in search of a mate, that could be a turnoff.

The rest of us, though, might not care.

Sara Schaefer, a stay-at-home mom I met shopping at the Sephora store in Cherry Hill yesterday, likes smelling not only like her mother but her grandmother, too. They are all fans of Evelyn Rose, by Crabtree & Evelyn. To her, rose is special. Whenever she goes to a wedding, the 29-year-old makes sure she's doused with it.

Not everyone's trying to fake men out.

Besides, as one of my phone buddies pointed out, "Does it really make a difference if a 90-year-old woman smells like she's 80?" *

Send e-mail to heyjen@phillynews.com. My blog: http://go.philly.com/heyjen.