First though I would like to pay tribute where tribute is due. I admit to pilfering the above title from the lovely and talented Martina McBride. Her song of the matching title is one of the highest quality and super-creative tunes ever written. (Of course, this is my own timid opinion.) Really, I truly believe it should be named the anthem of American women and the sooner the better. Any song that addresses ladies from thirteen to ninety-nine and makes us feel spectacular and attractive because we’re all “. . . beautiful the way you are” and we “. . . love without holding back” has my vote for “hymn of the epoch.”

Ms McBride also gets my ballot for Woman of the 20th Century. Married to the same man since 1989, she’s the mother of three daughters, Delaney, Emma and Ava, and an indefatigable charity worker as well as an inexhaustible performer. Her charity work tends toward abolishing domestic violence against women. She recently helped raise $400,000 for Middle Tennessee’s YMCA and worked with Kids Wish Network to fulfill the desire of a young girl dying of muscular dystrophy. The lady was also awarded the “Minnie Pearl Humanitarian Award” in 2003. This girl is a female dynamo. Bless her.

What? What did you say? Martina didn’t write the music for “This One’s for the Girls”? Or the words either? They were written by Aimee Mayo and her husband Chris Lindsey? And maybe someone else besides? Martina just sang the heck out of it? Well then, NEVER MIND!

Let’s get back to the most recent news from the People Who Research Everything Under the Friggin’ Sun Whether Anyone Wants or Needs It or Not. These guys have got a ton of time on their hands. They have to use it somehow. The latest research word came out in a slurry of articles last week. Time.com entitled its flash: “The Crying Game: Women’s Tears Dial Down Testosterone.” The article claimed that new research in the course of being conducted in Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science suggested that women’s tears turn off men’s sexual arousal. Without the women being conscious of doing such a dastardly deed, apparently even a small sniff of female tears can flip the limp switch. Alas and alack.

Saliva tests on testosterone levels in healthy young men discerned a measurable (13%) dip in the hormone after the boys smelled the girls’ tears. Innocent salt water was used as the control. Our young men claimed they couldn’t smell either the tears or the saline solution. And the tears didn’t make the guys empathetic either. Who but a researcher would be surprised by that fact?

The lack of odor doesn’t affect the men. Even after they were shown pictures of attractive women, the fellows who had inhaled the imperceptible tear scent found the girls less sexually appealing. The saline group reacted with normal male fervor, the sweeties.

Researchers have not isolated the chemical in girl-tears responsible for the male’s turn-off. However, they are actively stalking the compound.

Mice produce fluids that are similar to human tears. These fluids send chemical signals that make gentlemen mice more aggressive when they are exposed to the same tear-like fluids from other male mice. No one, either in Israel or elsewhere, mentioned what assistance the rodents could possibly be in the human research of turn-ons and turn-offs. I suggest that the mouse situation has long been settled. The mouse world is at peace.

The Israeli scientist, Dr Sobel, who stumbled upon this incredible find in women’s tears, intends to study the effects of men’s tears on both women and men. If the men’s tears turn other men either off or on, this research should be concluded, or erased, findings and all, right then and there. (My own low-grade and inconsequential opinion.) Dr Sobel was quoted in the Science Express as saying, “This study reinforces the idea that human chemical signals – even ones we are not conscious of – affect the behavior of others.” I’d say, on a guess, the human race learned this fact an awful long time ago. That was the day when our ancestors began to bathe.

When the scientists discovered that the study men, in their encounters with feminine tears, were effected in a rather topsy-turvy manner, they decided to put them in an MRI machine and made them watch (shiver) a sad movie. In the men who had recently smelled the tears, the MRI imaging showed a great deal less activity in the part of their brains where it’s believed sexual arousal occurs. This was compared with the brains of their saline-sniffing cohorts. It was an absolute win for the salties.

A behavioral neuroscientist who works in Philadelphia, when given the particulars of the research, came out with “well done,” and said that the design of the experiment was “elegant.” He continued, “This suggests that there is a very real possibility that tears may be playing a role in chemical communication in humans.” You think? Duh!

But would a few spritzes of tear-potion be strong enough to deter a rapist? Dr Sobel thinks not. Even if a miracle drug could be developed to reduce the rape rate it probably wouldn’t contain tears. Rapists see and smell buckets of tears during a sexual assault with no measurable effect on them at all. But the good doctor believes that other uses can be found for the miracle molecule that turns many men’s libidos to mush. “Some men,” states Dr Sobel, “may be immune (to tears) and even worse, the idea that it could lead them wrong is a viable possibility.” So right, doc! Research onward.

Dr Asen Akpek of Johns Hopkins University’s Wilmer Eye Institute, not involved with Dr Sobel’s exciting new research, said, “This is very interesting.” A man of few words, obviously. Still, there are many questions hanging fire because of this vitally important study. I have a couple myself.

Number One: why didn’t this information come out when I was busily pro-generating innumerable children and, at the same time, keeping a stiff upper lip for years? Don’t get me wrong. I wanted five children. I wanted to show my mother that it could be done without the child-producer becoming a child-abuser. (Hope that got across to my kids.) Number Two: If I had known about the female tear phenomenon, do you think I wouldn’t have used it? Oh boy! I could have brought forth a Niagara Falls of tears between every period. Trust me.

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About the author Cate Lane: Born in Minnesota and raised a temperate progressive, I was carried off to Texas 10 years ago by the tsunami that was my husband's retirement. Texas is not Minnesota, not by a long shot. However, I hear that Minnesota isn't Minnesota anymore either.

Writing was always my first choice in life. I began writing at the age of 8, small books about pioneers heading west. Little did I know then that I would be living in the most "western" of all the states, Texas. No one told the Texans that they are simply Southerners who, like Bugs Bunny, took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and wound up here.

I am sneaking up on 70 years of age and now own a vast store of useless knowledge. Happy to share any or all of it with you all.

Email: CthlnLn@aol.com

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