From the original article on September 19, 2011. Author: Chateau Heartiste.
Take a look at the very hot Betty Draper (aka January Jones):
She is a raving beauty with a sexual philtrum.
Now take a look at the very sexy Rachel Menken (also a Mad Men character):
Don’t you just want to bang her on a kitchen counter after playing pattycakes with her ass cheeks using a spatula?
If you averaged the ratings of 100 men, there’s little doubt that Betty would score about a point higher on the looks scale than Rachel, and their scores would roughly converge around a 9 for Betty and an 8 for Rachel. (Please spare the readers your personal preference. Averages are what matter in the sexual market.)
Yet, I predict that a majority of men would find Rachel to be “sexier” than Betty. Why is that? What nebulous traits imbue a woman with the alluring glow of sexiness?
I’m sure a man steeped in aesthetic sensibility would craft an enlightening essay full of power adjectives and stirring metaphor as a paean to what constitutes female sexiness, and boy will it sound good on paper. But it won’t mean a goddamned thing. Empty words to flesh out a reality that doesn’t exist except in the glorifier’s head. Which pretty much sums up the whole of modern art, come to think of it.
No, sexiness has little to do with face shape, or eye sparkle, or energy, or chi, or mouth curl, or the way she holds a cigarette. Instead, what sexiness means in the minds of men is a lot more pedestrian. When men say a woman is sexy, they mostly mean she is ATTAINABLE.
The average man looks at a hot woman, and he lusts for her, but he entertains scant possibility that he will be able to bed her. But when that man looks at a perceived sexy woman, he couples with his appreciation a genuine feeling that, given just the right ecological conditions, he could actually seduce that woman and enjoy her sex.
None of this should suggest that sexy women aren’t also good-looking women. Nerds, intelligent but mousy artist types, white knights and feminist apologists for plain janes love the “sexy” label because they value its utility as a loophole and ego massager against the unrelenting and immutable beauty standards of the sexual marketplace. Show me a man who calls an ugly woman ineffably sexy, and I will bet you that he is himself an SMV loser.
Sexy women are never the unattractive (or even marginally attractive) totems to an imaginary equalist dating market that fembots and washed up cougars wish they were. Quite the opposite. While sexy women are often not as hot as genuinely hot women, they aren’t much more than a point lower on the universal looks scale. What primarily distinguishes the sexy woman from the hot woman is that she possesses just enough in the way of physical flaws that she catapults from dreamy but distant object of beauty to alluring but attainable perfumed girl sharing a drink with you.
In other words, you can more easily envision your dick in Rachel’s vagina than in Betty’s vagina, and that makes all the difference in perception.
There are other, relatively minor distinctions that make a sexy girl stand out from a hot girl. Obvious markers would include sluttiness of dress, throat-raspiness of flirting, expertise in lowering the eyelids to half-mast for long periods of time, and mastery of the good-to-go vibe. But before you ugly and plain chicks start practicing your eyelid lowering technique, know that no amount of sexy mimicry will transform your face into one that men want to spermally defile. You still need the looks, and for that you have only your parents, and to a lesser extent your self-discipline to push away from the table, to credit or blame.
There are those rare ultrafeminine creatures who coalesce both ethereal beauty and feral sexiness in one package (before she crossed the Rubenesqueicon):
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