That Is So Hot!

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.  –  Reinhold Niebuhr

One day a few years ago I was washing clothes, and when the machine shut off I discovered to my chagrin that it had failed to spin after the final rinse; the machine was thus still full of water.  I turned the dial back to “spin” and even tried spinning it in other cycles, to no avail; something was clearly wrong with the mechanism.  So I called Grace, who is very handy with such things, and she told me to empty the machine so she could tilt it as needed in the repair process.  I laboriously wrung out all the clothes and put them in the dryer, but the only clean hose my husband could find to use as a siphon was just a little smaller than a standard garden hose.  I dropped the one end into the rinsewater and he said, “That hose is too big; you’re not going to be able to create enough suction to get it started.”

“O ye of little faith,” I replied, and set to work sucking on the hose until I could draw no more; I then quickly kinked it to prevent air pressure from forcing the water back down, caught my breath for a minute, and repeated the suction.  After about three or four iterations of this process I got a big mouthful of water and immediately dropped the upper end into a bucket, then succumbed to a fit of heavy coughing due to aspirated water.  My husband patted me on the back to assist in getting the nasty water out of my lungs, and as soon as I was done choking and wheezing and he knew I was all right, he looked into my teary, red eyes and said, “That was so hot!”

I guess some women would’ve been upset or angry and accused him of not caring about my distress, but I laughed because it was so typically masculine.  He didn’t speak until he knew that I was all right, and I appreciated the sincerity of the compliment; a man only finds something like that sexy if the woman doing it is attractive.  If Grace had been the one sucking on that oversized hose he might’ve been impressed but not stimulated because he doesn’t find her attractive, but because it was me he couldn’t help noticing the sexual overtones of my performance.

What reminded me of this story was a video which made the rounds on the internet last week, or more specifically the reactions to it.  Many male commenters on various sites declared the girl (named Mel) and/or video “kinda hot” or even “really hot”, while (predictably) a number of feminist commenters pissed and moaned a la “why does everything about women have to have a sexual connotation?” etc.  But as I said in the paragraph above, this isn’t exactly true; if Mel had been fat, middle-aged and ill-favored people might’ve been enchanted with her talent (as they were with Susan Boyle or Ted Williams) but wouldn’t have said anything about “hot”.  But that isn’t the case; she has a pretty face, beautiful eyes, healthy hair and a cute smile and comes across in the video as sweet and fun-loving.  She’s therefore captured male attention before she even opens her mouth, and everything else follows like rail cars behind a locomotive.  Once a man finds himself attracted by a woman, any other positive quality – intelligence, compassion, talent, style, education, etc – tends to be viewed as an enhancement to that attraction.

Now, I understand that women who are unattractive, hate men or have been brainwashed into thinking beauty equals “objectification” might resent this, but the depth of their fanaticism both fascinates and repels me.  How can anyone be so deeply in denial about Nature that she fails to understand that this is the way it has to be?  The things men are programmed to find attractive in women (youth, symmetrical features, clear eyes and skin, shiny hair, a normal weight ratio, etc) are all evidence of health and good genes, and though we humans have added layers of meaning to sexuality its most basic purpose as far as our hindbrains are concerned is reproduction, and there is no getting around that.  If men were not interested in sex as much as they are our species would have died out long ago, and any wrongheaded attempt to reprogram the male brain to be able to turn the sex drive on and off at will, or to be sexually attracted by some artificial non-reproductive criterion feminists consider palatable, is doomed to fail just as surely as attempts to reprogram people to crave foods of low caloric value (leaves, etc) over those of high caloric value (fats and sweets).  And a good thing, too, because anyone who ate only lettuce and celery would die of malnutrition as soon as he exhausted his fat reserves, and if men were attracted to asymmetry, obesity and old age our species would die off in a few dozen generations due to attrition and accumulated genetic problems.

Bitching about the criteria by which men are attracted to women (or women to men, for that matter) is like complaining about the sky being blue or water being wet; it’s the sort of asinine waste of time which could only be found among privileged, pampered individuals in an overcivilized society who have nothing more important to concern themselves with.  There are many, many things in the world which can be changed and many others which cannot, and those who learn to tell the difference are a lot better-adjusted and fundamentally happier.