As I find myself changing priorities by spending less time on maintaining my physical appearance, and more time on my emotional growth, (translation: watching TV), I see that I need to find a way to feel sexual and desirable regardless of what’s happening on the outside. To help me reach this goal, I decided to consult the experts on this topic, three single guys.

When I asked Ben, a hot 24 year old plumber, how important physical beauty was to sex, he shared a personal experience.

“I once dated this girl who, seriously, looked like a centerfold.” He said, “But, sexually, she was like a saltine cracker. Even worse, she was like a low sodium, low fat saltine cracker.”

I challenged him with something I once overheard in a women’s bathroom. “Honey, when you look this hot, all you gotta do is show up.”

“Is that true?” I asked.

“Not with this chick” Ben said. “No amount of beauty could make up for the fact that she lacked a human soul.”

Ray, a 40 year old investment banker used the following analogy.

“Sometimes it’s nice to go to a fancy french restaurant.” he said. “The food looks great with squiggly ribbons of sauce, and chives sprinkled over a tiny sliver of meat. It tastes great. You might even recommend the restaurant to your friends. But, it doesn’t fill you up the way Western Sizzlin can. A lot of beautiful women are like french food, pretentious and unsatisfying, while your basic meat and potatoes girls sustain you and keep you coming back for more.”

When Dave, a 28 year old salesman cited personality as the secret weapon that attracts men to average looking women, I was skeptical. I’ve always considered a good personality as the universal euphemism used by best friends to try to hook you up with their boyfriends' loser cousins.

After some clarification, I think I understand how it works. Basically, the degree to which a man is attracted to a woman’s personality is the degree to which she makes him feel desirable, sexy, smart, manly, etc. It’s not as easy as it sounds. That’s why it’s called seduction.

Sexual attraction is complicated because it is at once primal and basic, but emotionally complex. To buy in to the media version of sex being the exclusive domain of beautiful people, we deny the emotional component that makes human sexuality uniquely human.

Personally, I may never reach the kind of sexual Nirvana that goes beyond physical boundaries, but I plan to keep trying, even if it means eating more ice cream and sacrificing another day at the gym.

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