“What girl doesn’t melt at the sight of a hot guy with a cute dog?”
With those words, a testament to the complex and slightly weird sexuality of women, Cleo magazine’s annual meat wagon, its Bachelor Of The Year competition, was rolled out.
Flying thick and fast, as the announcement of the winner was made, were double entendres like: “Eamon Sullivan BEATS OFF STIFF competition to win”, “it was a HARD decision”, and “CLEO Bachelor of the Year winner REVEALED.”
Made to perform like circus monkeys in their identical t-shirts, the 50 finalists lined up on stage to await judgment.
Standing beside them, dissolving any self dignity left, was a giant Ken doll box with a real life Ken inside. In front of them was the intimidating audience of purring glamourpusses, panting cougars and lady journos.
With tiaras of tousled hair and nervous smiles these poor disillusioned men looked as eager to please as Miss World contestants.
But pleasing your Cleo masters is a daunting task. The criterion for male sex object is perfection in everything:
“Eamon is the perfect Cleo Bachelor”, said editor Gemma Crisp. “He’s charismatic, he’s ambitious, he’s intelligent, he’s amazing in the kitchen, and he’s also the proud dad of his adorable French bulldog, Baxter. The fact that he’s ripped and has a couple of Olympic medals lying around at home doesn’t hurt either!”
Gemma, you forgot to mention he also has a penis. Gemma: “Ewww don’t spoil everything!”
The humiliation of the male species continued on after the winner was decided when the Prize Hunk was presented with a Nissan Micra.
That’s right, a Micra - from the Greek word mikros, meaning small. Very small, one thousandth of a millimetre to be exact. They could have at least given the poor chap a Maxima.
Why does a male “beauty” contest organised by a progressive female magazine have two blonde bimbo types kissing the winner, and female dancers in tight shorts? Probably the same reason women’s magazines have women all over them.
Essentially women prefer to look at themselves and each other. The bachelor competition was merely an amusing sideshow to the real event: the celebration of the female form and female vanity.
More significantly for men, women aren’t interested at all in seeing what makes us men.
“I mean just imagine if girls weren’t weirded out by our boners and stuff and just, like, wanted to see them. I mean, you know, that’s the world I one day want to live in”, laments the teenage boy in the film Superbad. Fat chance, kiddo.
Cleo was the first Australian mainstream women’s magazine to feature nude male centrefolds but they didn’t show everything. Readers never saw Jack’s Thompson or Norman’s Yemm.
The Australian Women’s Forum, however, was a magazine that delighted in full male nudity and erotic stories with a non-Mills and Boon explicitness.
Amazingly, during the early ‘90s its circulation was as high as 45,000 a month. I myself appeared in one of its editions, under a ridiculous fictitious name, wearing nothing but a pair of white socks.
Sadly, the publication folded in 2001 but there is a Facebook group calling itself: We Want Australian Women’s Forum Back!, with the mantra: “We think Australian women deserve to have their own perve mag to “read” again.”
MillieMae Dunlop, one of only 27 members, pines: “Miss you so much AWF - Even though you could never show a proper pointer.”
That’s the spirit girls. Why can’t more women have such simple erotic tastes?
To be attracted to a woman, a man doesn’t need to know her surname, if she is married (Zoo Weekly has never run a Spinster Of The Year competition), famous or has career aspirations. Nor is it dependent on her being the proud mother of a Shih Tzu called Chi Chi.
And yet women insist on giving us their bios. Melbourne Storm Cheerleader Of The Month, Paige, “can walk on her hands and stand on her head, and wants to be a dancer on Broadway”. Unless she’s willing to do those things naked, we’re not interested.
By the way ladies, those “couple of Olympic medals lying around” Eamon’s bachelor pad are only bronze and silver (ie second and third). Also his pet event is the 50 metres which is all over in 21 seconds. You’d be lucky if he could raise one of his sultry eyebrows after that.
I, on the other hand girls, have lying about, a blue rosette (ie first ie winner) from an Eastern Suburbs Primary School Cross Country Championships. (One Hour, 20 minutes).
Perhaps you could come around sometime and I’ll show it to you.
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