Tools of Attraction

The following is excerpted from a commentary in DNA magazine by Andrew Creagh.

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When our sisters in the heterosexual female community put together a list of sexy guys they often call it a “bachelor” list or a “who’s hot” list, taking the emphasis off the sexiness. They say they like a man in a pair of favourite jeans and a not-too-tight T-shirt. They love men who are compassionate (and that usually means killing the spider in the bathtub, not volunteering for aid work in Ethiopia), and they hate men wearing speedos!

Men who find other men sexy are, I think, a lot more straightforward. Just look at DNA’s daily blog to see whose pics get the most hits. They’re guys whose masculinity is up-front – hairy chests and bulging swimwear; men who confidently project their sexuality, whatever that may be.

. . . While we’re attracted to a variety of heights, shapes, skin colours and olfactory and auditory stimuli, scientists have been able to determine that all other characteristics aside, the classic V-shaped male torso with broad shoulders and slim hips is the dominant factor. They’ve even been able to put some technical specs to it: “Consistently, men with a waist-to-shoulder ratio of 0.75 or lower are viewed as considerably more attractive than men with more even waists and shoulders,” reckon researchers at the Cambridge University Zoology Department.

The same researchers also concluded that women are more attracted to men with chest hair than without, so while Vogue readers might like looking at tall, skinny, hairless androgynous boys, they don’t really want to mate with them. Science also tells us that symmetrical facial features are apparently more attractive to us because they signify healthy genes with which to breed.



Ideals of physical attraction do change. Looking at photography from 100 years ago, when muscle men were commonly used as models, we can assume that the ideal was all about muscle definition in the arms. The Adonis of that age cared little for the washboard abs or fleshy pecs that we adore today.

In the couture-conscious decades of the 1940s and ’50s, the naked male body was rarely seen at all. Measures of attractiveness were almost entirely gauged in the face: the strength of the jaw line, the straightness of the nose, the sharpness of the part in his hair and the crease in his hat. The sexual revolution in the ’60s and the era of disco in the ’70s saw men taking off their shirts in public. Thin was in – for the moment. The following decades put masculine ideals on billboards and in advertising campaigns and bigger became better.

If there’s a defining trend by today’s standards it’s hard to identify. Contemporary ideas of masculinity, maleness and attractiveness are a jumble of shaved legs, steroid abuse, Photoshop disasters and misguided art direction!

. . . If you ask me, the sexiest man alive is one whose eyes light up when I walk in the room, who can make me laugh, and who doesn’t care how stupid I look when I dance.

- Andrew Creagh

Running Hare II

“Running Hare” by Harriet Mead.

The Society of Wildlife Artists notes:

Animal and birds inspire Harriet’s work, an interest developed from an early age due to the influence of her late father, Chris Mead, a well known author and broadcaster. His passion for birds gave Harriet an appreciation of the natural beauty of animals and birds.

Most of Harriet’s sculptures use welded steel, a material of versatile strength that enables her to capture movement in the subject, and balance pieces in a way nearly impossible using a more traditional material. Harriet captures the essence of the animal without sentimentality, and uses the steel in a sympathetic way to outline strength and muscle. She seeks to capture something of the quiet presence of the animal and not necessarily the drama.

Tan Lines XVI

Running Hare

Image: “Running Hare” by Kary Fisher (limited edition screen print, 38 x 28 cm).

Antinoüs

Here’s a second excerpt from Vittorio Lingiardi’s excellent book Men in Love: Male Homosexualities from Ganymede to Batman.

For the first excerpt from Lingiardi’s book, click here.

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The Zeus-Ganymede relationship served as a model for many famous love stories in the ancient world, such as the love between the emperor Hadrian and his Greek eromenos Antinoos [or Antinous]. These two met in Bithynia, the younger man’s native country, around 123 B.C. . . . Hadrian abducted the boy and was devoted to him for the rest of his life. Inseparable companions, they always traveled together, and together took part in the Eleusinian mysteries.

Identifying himself with the king of Olympus, the emperor decided to restore all temples and statues dedicated to Zeus, including the Olympieion of Athens, with its huge statue of the god in gold and ivory sculpted by Phidias. In their turn, as a sign of gratitude, the Athenians dedicated a statue in the Parthenon to Hadrian. Throughout Greece, the Roman emperor came to be worshipped as a god in his own right, and thus, the new Greco-Roman religion acquired its own trinity, made up of Zeus, Jupiter, and Hadrian.

Consequently, the process of Antinoo’s divinization began while the young man was still alive and reached its apotheosis after the younger man’s mysterious death by drowning in the Nile.

Antinoos, the last divinity of the ancient Mediterranean world, was revered in ways similar to the cults of Osiris, Dionysus, Hermes, and Eros. Innumerable statues, coins, temples, and even a city, Antinoopolis, would bear for all time the name of melancholy Emperor Hadrian’s lost love. Before a bust of Antinoos on exhibit in the British Museum, the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson “bent forward a little and said in a deep slow voice: ‘Ah – this is the inscrutable Bithynian.’ There was a pause and then he added, gazing into the eyes of the bust: ‘If we knew what he knew, we should understand the ancient world’” (C. Tennyson 1949, p. 395).

SpiralSea17's portrait of Antinous (2006).

Like Ganymede, Antinoos for centuries stood as a symbol of same-sex love, and also as a platonic ideal of spiritual love. Like Ganymede, Antinoos was transformed into a star: wanting his lover to be remembered for all eternity, Hadrian named a constellation after him. In the Almagest, Ptolemy’s first great compendium of Greek astronomy, the stars of Antinoos are mentioned as part of the Aqila (Eagle) group; in various ancient maps of the heavens.

Andrew Prior’s portrait of Antinous (2008).

Recommended Reading:
Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous by Royston Lambert.

Leaping Hare

Image: “Leaping Hare” (detail), Pontifical, Italy, c.1435-1440 (MS.28 f.135v).