How to be a sexier man(blog marathon post 28)

If you were a  teen or in college,  in the nineties you would be familiar with the catchy number  ‘I am too sexy’ by Right Said Fred, which released in 1991, going on to reach number two in United Kingdom and No.1 on the US charts. The song is sung from the point of view of a narcissistic, bald muscular, male model with hoop earrings and a netted  mesh shirt  who goes on to sing that his personal level of sexiness makes him too sexy for various different things ranging from a shirt to his cat to New York  to Japan.

Another music band The Black Crowes have a song  with really cocky lyrics that  lyrics that go Action speaks louder than words/ And I’m a man of great experience/I know you’ve got another man/But I can love you better than him.

There are many songs where the singers brag about themselves and can’t wait to tell the world how great they are and how everyone else just cannot match up to their prowess.

How presumptuous and boastful is that?

While on screen in music videos such things might be amusing, in real life women would be appalled with a self-obsessed narcissistic guy who is completely into himself and too busy for her. There is a fine line between confidence and being obnoxious. Okay—there is actually a thick fat invisible line, drawn in red --- highlighted, marked, and obvious. Yet many men seem to be oblivious to it. The inherent male competitiveness makes many believe they are a tad more amazing, a tad wiser and a whole lot smarter than they actually are. Scientists say that evolution might have had a part to play in this and it is a trait which is likely to have developed over thousands of years.

Various studies have shown that men are most likely to misread signals from attractive women, perceiving their attention to be more sexual than the women actually intended it. They also tended to think the women were more interested in them than they actually were. Men tend  delude themselves into thinking that a particular woman is into him and he might walk away from a conversation with misconception that he has a chance to have sex with her, where as the woman might have just thought that it was nice, friendly conversation.

Plenty of advertisements, movies and online articles tell us many ways to ‘be macho’ and impress women by being muscular, fit and an alpha-male. Yet, when real women are asked what they find sexy in a man, you are likely to find unconventional and cute answers which veer from what is presumed to be traditionally sexy.

In an online survey, among the lesser known things that women find sexy in a guy were attention to the way they dressed, being kind to animals, reading, respecting waiters, cashiers and other service people, making the bed, helping around the house, being good around children, being kind to someone who is shy and having a good sense of humour with an ability to laugh at himself.

In Mating Intelligence unleashed: The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating and Love , Robert Provine analysed more than 3000  singles and  found that both men and women considered a sense of humour as sexy. But each gender had different perceptions of what they meant by this phrase. Women tended to prefer men who made them laugh, while men preferred women who laughed at their jokes. Social scientists say that an evolved sense of humour indicates both general and verbal intelligence—a quality much desired for the propagation of the species which is why this plays an important role in mate selection. Side note --A tip to be sexier: Women can boost their attractiveness by laughing a bit more and guys can instantly up their hotness quotient by learning how to make her laugh.

The other day when I returned back from my yoga class, my spouse had cooked breakfast for me. A grilled sandwich and a fried egg, sunny-side up just the way I liked it.  It was too delicious to not click a picture and so I did, posting it on Facebook with the comment ‘All the single ladies on my timeline: please marry a man who cooks. Men who cook are sexy.’  The post got a record number of likes not only from young women but also from young men, with almost all women agreeing that that indeed cooking is one skill that makes a man instantly sexy.

So make her laugh, cook for her, pay her compliments and listen to what she has to say. She will be all yours.

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This piece first appeared in The Financial Chronicle