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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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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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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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.

Most real women are far too frugal to buy books in hard back. But there are some exceptions.

Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child are one exception. For those of you who don’t know, Jack Reacher is the itinerant ex-military cop who wanders the U.S., stumbling into situations requiring his special skills of calculation mixed with a hard headed willingness to do serious violence. He carries only essentials with him, a folded toothbrush, an ATM card and an expired passport. Every couple of days he buys a new set of clothes, discarding the old one. He occasionally works the odd job, but lives mostly on his savings.

Reacher’s operating principle is forward movement. He hates to go back. In Nothing to Lose, the new Reacher novel, he’s “taken it into his head to cross the continent diagonally” from Calais, Maine to San Diego, California. As the book opens, Reacher is in Hope, Colorado where he is intrigued enough by the name of the neighboring town, Despair, to make a side trip to it.

In Despair, he is picked up by the police, tagged a “vagrant” by the town judge and driven back to the border between Hope and Despair. His decision to stick around is described this way: “Six blocks to Main Street, Reacher figured. If he turns left, takes me onward to the west, maybe I’ll let it go. But if he turns right, takes me back east to Hope, maybe I won’t.”

Reacher has been called “One of the most popular characters in contemporary thrillers, a perfect hero” (Chicago Sun-Times) and “the thinking man’s action hero.” (Denver Post).

He is intriguing. And, he is “thinking” in the sense that he is calculating and not just when he is faced with violence where the odds are against him. Here, his operating principle is “Get your retaliation in first.” And there are other odd flashes of calculation as for example when he calls upon the judge in Despair. “In Reacher’s experience the average delay when knocking at a suburban door in the middle of the evening was about twenty seconds.”

What an extraordinary thing for a character to know!

But there is more. After a woman answers the door she “stood still and said nothing. In Reacher’s experience the husband would show up if the doorstep interview lasted any longer than thirty seconds.”

Wow.

But he is not a crusader in the sense that John MacDonald’s Travis McGee was a knight in tarnished armor defending the weak or wronged. Far from it. His only motivation to investigate Despair and trigger the events of the book is the right turn made by the cop. Once the town’s ugly secrets begin to emerge, he is on the “right” side, but only by happenstance.

I once read a review where Lee Child was quoted as saying “Reacher is an animal.” (That might not be exactly the word he used, but it’s close enough.)

He is. A fascinating and brilliant animal. And Lee Child has given us a fascinating and brilliant book.

It’s number one on my summer reading list.

As I was flipping through my stash of hot guy pics, I came across one of Keanu Reeves and thought about that silly movie where Diane Keaton picks Jack Nicholson over Keanu. I said when I saw it and still believe—that just wasn’t right! Keanu’s character was gorgeous, charming, a heart surgeon, adored her, AND he took her to Paris for her birthday for dog’s sake!  Jack’s character was a jerk played by Jack. Was this woman too stupid to live or what?

Based on my vast research over many years of dating, I’ve decided handsome men can be just as wonderful people as the aesthetically challenged.  AND they look so delicious naked. Yeah, yeah, I’m shallow but there’s no way I’ll ever be so demented I think Jack is a better deal than Keanu…ever, ever, ever!

Of course, the Ultimate Perfect Man ever in cinema was Jake Brigance in A TIME TO KILL. Everything a woman could want—brilliant, loving, faithful, funny, a modern day knight in shining armor with a southern accent fighting for justice. It didn’t hurt that he looked like this:

Sigh. Off to the movies…

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Tall, dark and handsome.  The classic romantic hero. Who can resist that fantasy? And why would you?

I first discovered today’s Hot Guy on Robin Schone’s forum when he was posted as the image of Michel des Anges (Michael of the Angels), the damaged hero of Schone’s historical erotic romance, THE LOVER.  Beiron Andersson was gorgeous at 27—back in the mid-90’s—and for some time I didn’t realize the photos were a decade+ old.  Here’s a PG pic but a Google search will produce a wide range of photos including some artistic nudes that will steam up your screen (nothing X, but he is European).

Recent pics and video have appeared online—dog love the internet– proving the guy still has it. Maybe it’s just me, but I think he’s just as hot at 40+. Beiron today…

It’s getting mighty warm in here.

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I had the best intentions of branching out today to one of the all time hottest brunettes—Beiron Andersson– but current events…okay, maybe tabloid events…could not be ignored.

Yes, I’m talking about the five story high underwear advert on the front of Macy’s in downtown San Francisco. No kidding—David Beckham in nothing but Armani briefs five stories high. And the man himself was there for the unveiling or whatever they did, although he wore a suit not briefs whilst signing autographs.

All the fuss made me think—for years lingerie shows have been broadcast on TV and the internet with young busty models making a fortune strutting their stuff in push-up bras and thongs. (Not to mention making the rest of the world’s female population feel inadequate while dreaming of wearing a million dollar corset crusted in diamonds.)  So why shouldn’t Becks cash in while he still has the body to do it? And that body!! But don’t take my word for it…once again he just has to be Friday’s Hot Guy:

What more can I say?

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