Sweat about me?

In the lead-up to fashion week in Melbourne, when style queens and princesses are wearing their manicured fingers to the bone as they forage through their wardrobes for the perfect ensemble to sport while sipping champagne post-catwalk show, one has to wonder whether their choices will impress members of the opposite sex. How many minutes, hours, days, weeks, do women spend purchasing, preening, and praying, only to have their efforts ignored, unnoticed, or unappreciated by straight men? Not that I’m saying we should doll ourselves up for the exclusive purpose of appealing to the opposite sex, but there are many times when this is perhaps foremost in our minds. Sometimes to the detriment of our sanity.
The strange thing is that the only times men have tried to pick me up, (and I can count those times on less than one hand, probably due to my infamous ‘look of death’ which seems to scare men away) I’ve been looking my absolute worst. Or at least what I and any sane female would consider to be my absolute worst. These times were:
1. After a gym session, with a red, sweaty face, hair plastered to my head, in unflattering and stinky training gear.
2. On an overnight train in Italy in the middle of summer, after I’d been walking around all day and sweating like a pig (except apparently pigs don’t sweat). Again, probably stinky. The guy was wearing grey slip-on shoes with zippers though, so he obviously had questionable taste to begin with.
3. Outside a bank on a freeway that runs through the middle of nowhere (ie, just down the road from where I work). I had no makeup on and was in jeans and sneakers. I’m pretty sure that the wolf whistle from the truckies was therefore completely unwarranted. I do also realise that truckies will whistle at anything even remotely resembling the female form, so this instance perhaps doesn’t really count.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I don’t have any pictures that illustrate this unattractiveness, but you get the picture. Basically, I LOOKED LIKE CRAP.
This leads me to my question: do men really prefer the natural look? (And the oh-so-natural smell of sweat, rather than expensive fragrance?) Are expensive lotions, the latest fashions, beauty treatments and diets all just a complete waste of time, effort and cash? Should we really just concentrate on wearing our ugliest outfits, accessorised with flat hair, oily skin and the enchanting parfum-de-perspiration if grabbing a guy’s attention is our purpose? I smell a great idea for a reality show… or is that just the sweat working its magic?