Dad Hunt: La Lucha Continua!
...and, Hot Explained!

There are some amazing men in the world, whose collars I would gladly wear, but they all seem to be located in farflung exotic places like Florida and Northern California. The search thus far has turned up nada within a ninety mile radius of Carversville. In fact, Bucks County seems to be not only a Bear-Free Zone, but something of a Dad-Free Zone, too.

Am I excluding Philadelphia and NYC? No. Emphatically not. Well, maybe NYC. I don't look forward to trips up to Fun City at this point. I guess I need to be spending a lot more time in Philadelphia. During my brief interlude at OutFest on Sunday, I did indeed see some men who are definitely Dad material. But, I didn't have a chance to do much more than exchange Woofs! with them.

Last night on AOL, I got pretty peevish in the Phillyburbs M4M chat room. I'd get these IMs along the lines of "hot profile, Sir" and bark back (to the extent one can bark with typing), "Beer gut? Facial hair? Tattoos? Cigar smoker?" The inevitable reply was "sorry, Sir, that's not me."

Well why isn't it? To torture myself more, I had 'Monster Garage' on television in the background. (All the guys in my welding class are big Monster Garage fans, and it's pretty obvious why. Lots of great welding going on.) And when one mentions Jesse James to these Mr. Tim-types, they get all mooney. "He's so hot! I'd like to ride his chopper!"

Now, here's the Great Existential Question: If'n you think that Jesse James--or Vin Diesel, or me for Pete's Sake--are what you would call 'Hot,' then are you Hot? And if not, why not? Why not be hot?

I should put together a pamphlet, "How To Be Hot," get Kinko's to run off a bunch of copies, and put them next to the copies of the Philadelphia Gay News at the Raven.

Okay. I'm whining. Sorry about that.

Let me switch to Edumacation Mode.

What are we talking about when we talk about 'Hot' in the male of the species. A little bit of Evolutionary Biology might be helpful. Exploration of those things that we call secondary sex characteristics was done by a Swiss Evolutionary Biologist whose name escapes me. He worked with geese. Secondary Sex Characteristics (let's call them SSC, not to be confused with Safe-Sane-Consensual) are the basis of sexual attraction. They didn't evolve in the lower orders of animals because they were identified by sex. They evolved so that animals with a mind to reproduce could distinguish between potential mates and creatures of other species, rocks, plant life, and other inappropriate targets for copulation. Certain animals had genetic mutations which made some of these characteristics exaggerated, enabling potential mates to zero in on them all the quicker. Added on top of this was sexual differentiation, which was a later evolutionary development. But, exagerated characteristics worked well in this arena, too.

So, we've got peacocks with eye-catching tails, guppies with irradescent coloration, and babboons with those bright red butts. A later evolutionary development was exageration of characteristics associated with sexual arousal. In the human female, for example, the labia become engorged with blood. As a bi-product, a woman's lips (the ones on her face) also become somewhat engorged. And that's why lipstick--the artificial reddening of the lips--is considered sexy.

So it's not quite a matter of 'straight men think that large breasts and wide hips are sexy because these indicate that a woman is going to be a fertile mother for their children. Rather, straight men (and lesbians) think that large breasts and wide hips are sexy because men don't have them. It's that simple. Pick any thing that one sex characteristically has and the other sex doesn't, exaggerate it somewhat, and you've got Hot.

So. In the human male, what do men have that women don't have? Facial hair would be one thing. At least, great quantities of it. A muscular frame would be another. And beer guts? Yep. Women have a subcutaneous layer of fat more or less evenly distributed. Men, on the other hand, tend to store fat in specific areas, and the lower abdomen is one of them. Body hair? Oh yeah.

On top of this, there would be culturally determined sex attributes. In our culture, it's more common for men to have tattoos. Tattooing used to be something of a right of passage into manhood, and although in our day tattooing is pretty much omnipresent, it still has these associations. And, cigars are associated with men as opposed to women. (My father once recounted to me how he started smoking cigars. As a teenager, he smoked cigarets--it was the Forties, so it was mandatory--and worked afterschool for a German immigrant milk man cleaning his stables. My father once showed up for work smoking a cigarette. His boss said, "Ach! Vat are you smoking zat for? Zigarets are vat children and women zmoke. Here ist a zigar. Zat ist vat a man zmokes." And so my Dad started smoking cigars.)

So where did these Bucks County Boys get the idea that perfectly coiffed hair, a slim and trim physique, and clean shaven faces were All That? From advertising. When Madison Avenue attempts to sell a product, the most successful means that they've found since around the time of the Civil War was to have that product identified with youth and affluence. So think of the idle rich. They don't do manual labor, so they're not well built. They spend time in drawing rooms, so they're pale. And having facial hair makes you look older (the gray shows up there before it does on your scalp). And (with apologies to Carson Kressley), couture, grooming products, and shoes that not only are expensive but look expensive, are all signifiers of affluence.

Although broadcasting 'I'm Young and Affluent' might serve the purposes of Madison Avenue and our consumerist culture, let's be clear: it's not Hot. Exagerating those secondary sex characteristics, that's Hot.

And Hot is what you need to be if I'm gonna be making a coffee date with you at the Starbucks in Doylestown.

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