Want to smell 8 years younger? New York-based perfume company Harvey Prince & Co. has launched a new fragrance call Ageless Fantasy, which it claims will shave that many years off your age. How? We’ll get to that.

First the bad news: People over 40 stink. We’ll skip the scientific explanation and simply say that as men and women age, the body produces a chemical that you don’t need to know the name of. When this chemical breaks down, it causes “an unpleasant greasy odor,” according to Harvey Prince, which is the “natural body odor of aging.” Just what women over 40 need: one more thing to feel bad about.

Now the good news: Ageless Fantasy masks the skin’s natural age-revealing scent. Research has “proven” that men around women who use Ageless Fantasy believe them to be at least 8 years younger.

How exactly does this work? “Clinical trials” conducted with 75 men revealed that the particpants associated the smell of grapefruit with youth. So Harvey Prince combined pink grapefruit with a smidge of mango, pomegranate, jasmine and musk-said to be other youthful notes-and voilà: a fragrance was born.

So if we’re to believe the hype, Ageless Fantasy delivers a double whammy. It masks the offensive smell of over-40 female skin and makes men think women are younger than they actually are. Notice that the skin of men over 40 also has a bad smell, but Harvey Prince decided it was only a problem for women. And by the way, why aren’t men being pressured to seem younger? Call us hardliners, but we say this product is not only ageist but sexist.

Maybe we should lighten up. In the interest of fairness, we googled Ageless Fantasy to see what other people are saying about it. We found that some women love the scent and are having fun wearing it, while others think it makes them smell like a fruit cocktail. An online critic wondered if a 40-year-old spritzed herself eight times with Ageless Fantasy, would she turn into an embryo? Another female commentator declared, “I’m waiting for a fragrance for men that will make them six inches taller and three inches longer.”

Youth doesn’t come cheap. Ageless Fantasy EDT retails for $120 for 100ml. at www.agelessfantasy.com and is coming soon to QVC. If you love it and can afford it, go for it. But if you’re trying to knock years off your age, stop and remind yourself that life experience is the most attractive quality a woman can possess. Also think about relocating to France, where women “of a certain age” are thought of as babes. And don’t forget to pack a bottle of Pamplelune EDT by Guerlain, a sexy variation on the smell of-need we say?-grapefruit.