Romance for Real Women

Shirtless in jeans. What’s not to love? And this hot guy is so happy….

And then there’s pensive, shirtless in jeans.

And the designer stubble is just the icing on the…ah…cake.

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Lately I’ve been fascinated by men with very dark hair and bright blue eyes. It’s a combination you see on French men a lot but rarely elsewhere.  Don’t get me wrong, a fabulous body trumps blue eyes almost every time. Still, tall, dark, gorgeous AND bright blue eyes…sigh.  Today’s hot guy looks French to me but, brace yourself, he’s British. Yep, that land not famed for tall, dark and handsome. Maybe a Frenchman dipped into this gene pool somewhere. Not that it matters in the least.

And, yes, he’s David Gandy, the guy in the posters at the department store men’s fragrance counter. Truly awesome life size.

Hmmmmmm. Wouldn’t mind getting set adrift with him.

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August in Texas…Hell with Humidity. This should be a great time of year for hot bod watching.  Alas, it just ain’t so. Nevertheless, in the interest of perpetuating the myth that Texas is one big ranch full of hunky cowboys–shirtless in August–here are this week’s hot guys.

And cowboys in the city….

With shoulders and abs like those, who needs to see a face?

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A few weeks back I intended to post Beiron Andersson and got distracted by Becks’ ad campaign for Armani…me and about every other woman in the world with a pulse and internet access. So today is Beiron day.

Back in the mid 1990’s Beiron Andersson arrived in the US from Sweden and got a gig doing Guess adverts. His photos became instant classics, so much so that when I first discovered him a couple of years ago I assumed he was still in his 20’s. I’ll admit felt a tiny bit guilty lusting after such a young guy, but he was sooooooo delicious I sucked up my shame and continued to appreciate. Then I discovered he is now 40ish and still totally lust-worthy. So today our hot guy is one of the all time hottest in his youthful glory.

And I also want to point out Armani used him in one of its bathing suit adverts. Gotta love Armani, at least its male models.

One Friday soon I’ll post some current pics. Hint: He’s still got it and may be even better.

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Well, ladies, hurricanes trump romance, even for real women. In fact, the most romantic gesture I expect from my partner is his willingness to help move the patio furniture, tape the windows and fill buckets of water.

Today, that’s what we’re doing. Shopping for tinned foods; filling our tanks; and, buying batteries. Then there is always the emergency run to the liquor store where my partner reports there are no lines. Those pails have to be filled, too.

Edouard is out in the Gulf of Mexico and moving toward us at eight miles an hour with wind speeds up to fifty miles an hour. Our gleeful local reporters are warning it could easily turn into a hurricane given the warm waters of the gulf. (Tropical storms turn into hurricanes at seventy four miles an hour.) Less gleeful local officials are activating emergency preparedness systems.

I’m activating my own emergency preparedness system. The children are with Miss Moonbeam, who has called repeatedly this morning with instructions, commentary and warnings. I’m filling the tubs, inventorying tinned food, and laying in additional supplies.

I’ve contacted my friends, warriors with whom I sat out the Rita threat a few years ago. (Rita, a Cat 3 hurricane, was coming directly at us, but veered off to the northwest at the last minute. We stayed up as long as we could, finally going to sleep in the early morning. We woke to an eerie quiet, but no hurricane. We naturally congratulated ourselves on our perspicacity in not evacuating to join the rest of the state on stopped highways. In reality, we’d all left our preparations too late to evacuate.)

My friends aren’t as concerned about Edouard. It’s “only” a tropical storm. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I’m off to inspect the pails.

As you know, I consider myself something of an expert in sexy lingerie. (If you’re remotely interested, the cause of my obsession with sexy lingerie is described in Lingerie: My Backstory. Quite naturally, I blame it on my Mother, Miss Moonbeam.)

So, how, I ask myself, did I miss this story about Shirley of Hollywood? I consider Shirley one of the finest suppliers of exotic lingerie and have bought Shirley of Hollywood lingerie for years.

It must have been the heat. The perspiration in my eyes. My temperature induced fugue state. Real women don’t do well in the heat. (Oh, perhaps some of you do. I don’t.)

Because I missed it…Shirley’s Celebration of 60 Years of Sexy.

The private company is owned by the Schlobohm family and apparently really started expanding back in the sixties when it became a major supplier of Frederick’s of Hollywood. In the seventies, the company led the way in developing the “split crotch panty,” certainly an innovation as important as the microwave in the opinion of this real woman. The eighties saw the rise of Madonna and her “lingerie as outerwear” style, for which if nothing else, we can thank Madonna. The company went with the times in the nineties with outrageous and dramatic corsetry. And, Shirley’s is still growing. As CEO Roy Schlobohm says “there’s nothing compared to a woman in lingerie.” Amen to that, Roy.

To celebrate its anniversary, the company has rolled out a commemorative collection of lingerie showcasing a retrospective of sultry looks from 1948 to the present. And, it’s gorgeous. Check it out at www.shirleyofhollywood.com. Of course, these are all special orders and a little rich for me. But I can look.

More affordable are the wonderful new products featured by my favorite on-line lingerie store, www.inhisdreams.com

The company is posting lots of new goodies and this morning, I noticed it’s having a sale on its lace low-rise boy leg panties which I love.

But, I digress. Shirley is also sponsoring a contest for its next “Sexy Stars of Shirley,” models who will grace the pages of Shirley’s catalogues and calendars. www.inhisdreams.com posts the rules and for a moment, just for a moment, I was tempted.

But I’m way too warm for the hot lights of Hollywood, not to mention way too old. Nevertheless, I will be following the results. So, if you’re interested, ladies, take a look. Go to inhisdreams and click on the Shirley icon.

It could be fun.

A few months ago a British tabloid ran a story about male body hair and a survey asking who likes it and who doesn’t. I have a huge stash of hot guy pics and it struck me that very few of them had body hair. I did my own informal survey and was surprised to find a significant generational gap among women in their attitudes toward male body hair and an even bigger gap in men. Older women (50+) pretty much see body hair as a given in their partners since most men 50+ have never even considered man-scaping. On the other hand, young women (20’s to mid 30’s) often said they insisted on at least basic man-scaping.

Personally, I understand why a regular guy wouldn’t want to wax his entire body regularly (although they sure like it that we get our painful bikini waxes), but let’s face it—if I wanted a bed full of hair, I’d let my black lab sleep with me. Furry shoulders and backs just aren’t sexy. A bit of chest hair…okay. (BTW, whisker stubble is VERY sexy. Go figure.) As for private areas, all I can say is at least trim, guys. It’s called grooming. The same he-man who would be disgusted if a pretty woman failed to shave or wax legs, armpits and bikini often expects us to be turned on by the thick pelt covering his entire body. Yuck!

But to be fair, not all body hair is equal. Here are two hot guys—one with and one without. So what’s the verdict?

 In a YSL fragrance ad a few years back, Tom Ford had a gorgeous young French athlete pose naked complete with natural body hair. BTW, ads only appeared in French mags and I’ve cropped the pic to make it PG.

And here’s Cristiano with absolutely no visible body hair whatsoever.

Hmmmm. I may need to do more research. Perhaps the debate will just have to continue.

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As we limp through these hot, sticky dog days of summer, not much captures my attention except the prospect of an afternoon in a pool, an air conditioner turned to an extravagant seventy degrees and never ending sources of liquid beginning in the morning with ice coffee and progressing through soda, ice tea, and water to pails of alcoholic beverages at night.

The children are off with Miss Moonbeam to a cooler climate and thank goodness as my nerves are shot. Patience may be a virtue, but one hard to cultivate in a climate where nothing is thriving, water might be rationed and giggling newscasters nightly discuss record temperatures.

However, one news item did make me pull my blouse from my sticky back and put down my fan. I understand Los Angeles is prohibiting fast food chains from opening in sections of the city. Its citizens are too obese, proclaim the presumably svelte members of the city council.

It’s hard to work up any kind of outrage in these temperatures, but this one did it and not because I object, as all real women must object, to choice being imposed by local government.

Before the children left for their holiday, I had three mouths to feed. As I am a wage slave, there was no question of nightly excursions to any kind of restaurant, healthy or otherwise. We eat at home.

I would stagger from the office into the heat and to the super market and pick up something simple for dinner, vegetables I could grill, chicken breasts, hamburger, whatever was on sale. Grilling I am told keeps the ambient temperature in the house down.

But it doesn’t do a thing for my temperature. Five minutes outside and I’m a puddle. Not pretty.

I pass several fast food restaurants on my way to work. I began to notice them. They began to loom large in my rear view mirror. One morning as I was blinking perspiration from my eyes and cursing my car’s unreliable air conditioner, I saw a large blinking sign out in front of one that said, “Lesli, stop here tonight.”

I was on to something. Despite Miss Moonbeam, who was horrified, despite my own convictions about healthy food, convenience won. That and the fact I didn’t need to light a grill, an oven or my gas top stove.

The children were delighted. Hamburgers. Tacos. Those five dollar sandwiches. And, yes, fried chicken. This summer, we’ve had them all.

As you know, Miss Moonbeam is a vegetarian and disdainful of pop culture in which she includes fast food chains. When the children, despite my admonitions, babbled to her about the nightly feasts, she pushed up the date of their vacation, swooped in and with only a telling glare at me, took them off.

Thank God for Mothers.

Thank God for fast food.

Down with the LA City Council.

Now, I gotta go and unwrap dinner.

When it comes to good looking men, we’ve already established that I’m shallow. In real life when a see a gorgeous guy I have trouble with that brain/mouth connection and my eyes just don’t behave in a lady-like fashion. Nope, brain goes blank. Mouth does that fish thing. Be honest, what would you do if this guy was in front of you in line at Starbucks? (Assume he ordered a tall coffee, not a caramel non-fat soy latte with extra foam)

I have a couple of friends with farms and  ranches of various sizes and they even invite me to visit occasionally. I can imagine how much of a fool I’d sound like if I had to ask him where the south forty were.

Not that I’d mind looking a blithering idiot if I absolutely had to gawk at those abs and shoulders. Naked. Hey, I already admitted I’m shallow.

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Having blogged sexy underwear, I think it’s at least as important to blog the subject of British royalty. So, for real women everywhere, the question of the day: Is Camilla Parker-Jones really a dog?

I, like everyone I know, with the exception of real men, adored Princess Di. When I woke up on that dreadful day, my partner told me she’d broken her arm in an accident in Paris. (The first reports out of Paris suggested a less horrific accident.) Ignoring any other responsibility, I promptly hit the couch and wound up watching TV for an entire week.

I remember those darling boys; the miserable way the queen behaved; and, of course, Christopher Hitchens who wondered why people cared so much because she was “after all, just Euro trash.”

I didn’t disagree, but I watched.

The fascination with Diana continues more than a decade after her death. Tina Brown, the brilliant former editor of Vanity Fair, released a book last June called “The Diana Chronicles,” a major step up from the various degrees of merde released by the sleazy hangers on and former lovers who apparently surrounded Diana. And, didn’t the British High Court recently release yet another finding that really, really, really Prince Phillip had nothing to do with her death?

So, poor Camilla. She is rather long-faced and leathery and certainly those of us who remember the leaked love tape with Charles still cringe at his assertion he wanted to be “her tampon.” (I won’t dwell on what that might imply about the royal member.)

The problem with Camilla is that she’s just not relevant. She’s not gorgeous, mistreated or anorexic. However, she does put up with a guy who talks to plants, powers his car with wine and who is given to the kind of wacky assertions we might expect from a man waiting for his mother to die. So maybe she is a victim.

Nah.

I have to admit, I have a sneaking sort of sympathy for her. Remember Diana used to call her “The Rottweiler?” The tag, so apposite, gives lie, BTW, to Hitchens’s implication that Diana was brainless, unlike, say, Dodi Al Fayed.

So, maybe the question is “where do real women stand on the issue of Camilla Parker-Jones?”

That one I can answer.

We don’t care.