The Hotness Game
This past Saturday Tracy and I made a day trip of visiting Bolder. Amid a wealth of other to-dos and activities, we, while sitting outdoors enjoying pizza and beer while watching the crowds go by on the highly-trafficked Pearl Street, invented and played what we call “The Hotness Game”
The Hotness Game is a people-watching game defined simply as follows: while with your significant other, you and she/he take turns trying to pick out people walking by that one thinks the other would be attracted to, and name why. In other words, guess by image alone who appears to be datable in the eyes of your beloved. You get a point for every person you successfully name.
There are a couple of things about The Hotness Game that are worth sharing.
The Hotness Game probably requires being in a stable and secure relationship in order to play without calamity, and to play it otherwise is probably asking for trouble. Here again makes another reason to be delighted by the relationship Tracy and I have created. You can imagine a watered down version of this game wherein both players pretend their datable people are limited to near-carbon copies of the other. This was NOT the case in our playing, and we had way more fun because of it.
Physical image by itself is a DELIGHTFULLY shallow criteria for attraction, and the more you dabble in that being the end-all-be-all criteria (as one must while making snap judgments upon passers by while playing The Hotness Game), the more you appreciate the wealth of substance that lies in elsewhere in things like personality, passion, believes, and so forth. There were a couple of smokin’ hotties that Tracy [correctly] named as being my type for which my baser brain was content to muse upon “trading up”, which was then simply met by the sober realization “yeah, but I’d probably have to talk to her, too”. An ever-so-slightly expanded appreciation for my Tracy quickly followed each time.
I think, in our yet still slightly homophobic culture, that a guy playing The Hotness Game has to be secure enough in his sexuality to be able to recognize and point to other male hotness. While trying my best to name ’em for Tracy I got into more than one disagreement that ended in my saying “Really? Huh, I think he’s a pretty good lookin’ dude.”
The final takeaway from my experience of playing The Hotness Game is as follows: dang, y’all girls got it ROUGH. Seriously: you remember the point system I mentioned above? Tracy CRUSHED me on the scoreboard, and it wasn’t because she had that much of a leg up in knowing what I find attractive, nor a reluctance on my part to identify male hotness.
No, whether it’s a matter of disparity in effort among the sexes, or the natural order of things, there appears to be an absolute dearth of datable guys relative to datable women when you go on looks alone. While doing my darndest to spot a guy that my love would judge datable, I had to weed through loads of slouched postures, agape maws, unkempt hair, partially tucked in shirts, and aimless eyes. The ladies overall have their stuff WAY MORE together, and god bless ’em for it; I had no idea us fellas were generally such a sorry lot.
Now that I think of it: my final final takeaway from the experience is this. If you’re a nice guy who can never seem to land a nice girl, grab a platonic girl friend and go sit out on a busy pedestrian mall and play The Hotness Game together. While walking in a woman’s shoes, trying to spot datable guys, you’re apt to gain some pointers of what’s working and what’s not for you, and, if nothing else, you may get a dose of perspective concerning how truly datable you really are.
Come to think of it, I could have used this advice about a decade ago.