Teen Boys Picking Up on a Scent: Body Spray

"I wish I knew," Clarkson said. "I was born in the '60s, and we were into the natural and not the overpowering. And there is nothing really natural about" Axe.

Cans of the spray can be found stuffed in jeans pockets and squirreled away in lockers at Loiederman. After gym class, the locker room is often awash in musk, birch leaf and rich vanilla -- the "scent-illating" ingredients found in the various sprays.

"We do occasionally fear they are using it in place of showering," Principal Alison Serino said. "So we encourage them to take a three-pronged approach, with Axe being the final step." (Showering and soap being the first two prongs.)

Eighth-grader Klima Arrola started wearing Axe when he was 11 after seeing a TV commercial in a which a good-looking guy was mobbed by a bunch of even better-looking women. He found the ad appealing, he said.

Now 14, he prefers Axe's Orion fragrance, described in promotional literature as an "aromatic citrus/fruity fragrance with a transparent watery top note composed of minty accents, orange flower, geranium, citrus and musk."

But to Klima, who doesn't have a girlfriend, "It just smells good."

As for the girls, most they say they like the body sprays too -- when used in moderation.

"Someone by my locker uses it, but he uses so much that you can taste it in your mouth," said Allison Testamark, 14, scrunching up her nose in disgust.