The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [74]
On the brighter side, pheromones may account for some of the fun of kissing, especially the profound French kind. As a general rule, the human nose is positioned conveniently above the lips and, when pressed closely against one’s partner’s skin, is in a fine position to draw in whatever pheromones may be produced by the skin and in the saliva. This can also explain much of the joy of human snuggling.
But why would nature have provided us with a chemical like this? The answer is simple. Humans are the only mammals I can think of that are both gregarious and monogamous. For us, socialization is as important as sex. As Michael Stoddart points out in The Scented Ape, if a woman’s fertility were advertised by an irresistible pheromone that drew males from far and wide every twenty-eight days, monogamy would disappear and our social arrangements would give way to universal warfare. Much more useful is the pheromone that Berliner and his team at Erox claim to have discovered, a family-values pheromone, a chemical signal that makes us feel mellow and assured as we huddle together in small groups and sniff contentedly, without smelling a thing.
June 1993
Going for the Burn
When I arrived at the spanking-new Canyon Ranch in the Berkshire Mountains, I was coming down from an intense eating binge as Vogue’s monthly food correspondent. No sooner had I polished off a metric ton of mail-order Christmas treats than I was on a plane to Paris, where I had squeezed twenty-two restaurants into sixteen days. Then it was off to Texas, roaming between Dallas and Fort Worth in an extremely rewarding search for world-class barbecue joints. My weight had climbed into a new zone, and I was getting nervous about it. Five days later, Canyon Ranch had changed my life.
• From now on, I will always use conditioner after shampooing. The shower room had pump bottles of conditioner, which left my hair so much softer and easier to manage. Where have I been all these years?
• I will become a serious weight lifter. See below.
• I will strive to become merely chubby again. That was twenty pounds ago.
• Until then, I will wear sweatpants as often as possible. They bind and chafe less than regular trousers and slip on so much more easily.
• I will become a spa junkie, if I can afford the habit.
Canyon Ranch’s publicity material scientifically estimates that more than half of America’s population has heard of the original Canyon Ranch in Tucson. I was vaguely aware that it was the first major coed fitness resort, not just another plush pamper palace exclusively for women. And that it was a magnet for socialites, movie stars, and CEOs, a lush oasis where you eat one thousand exquisite gourmet calories a day yet never go hungry. I also knew they were building a Canyon Ranch clone in Lenox, Massachusetts, near Tanglewood and Jacob’s Pillow and, for those like me who are old enough to care, Alice’s Restaurant. It opened on October 1.
Even if you’ve been a guest before (three out of four have), the first thing you get is a guided tour with lots of numbers: forty million dollars to build on 120 wooded acres, an inn for two hundred guests with 120 rooms and suites (each with a VCR), a spa with 100,000 gleaming square feet for fitness and health, an 1897 mansion called Bellefontaine for dining and wellness, thirty-two fitness classes daily, sixty massage therapists, three hundred staff members in all. Newcomers may find themselves winded before the end of the guided tour.
Next you fill out some medical forms. The final page strikes you as particularly bellicose and hypocritical. “Do you find yourself obsessing about food?” it asks. “Not at all,” you reply, “but I think about almost nothing else.” So, you soon realize, does everybody at Canyon Ranch, including the three hundred on staff.
Then you meet with a program adviser who guides you through a bewildering range of possibilities: aquatic fitness, aromatherapy, arthritis consultation, badminton, basketball, behavioral therapy, biking,