Like most American girls, I got my feminine ideal from pop culture.  I was 14 when I went to see Purple Rain at the cineplex, and Apollonia Kotero, love interest of the artist intermittently known as Prince, became my ideal.  She was olive-skinned, mysterious, temperamental, about 5'2", and, despite being about a size zero, had breasts like prize canteloupes.  Prince would look at her and go sort of green and gooey around the gills.

I gathered that Apollonia was a Real Woman, and that no man, much less Prince, would ever turn to mush at the sight of me unless I looked like her.  As the summer sun set over Johnson City, Tennesee (I was visiting, and my cousin got me into the "R" movie), I prayed fervently for a bouncing set of Apollonias that would make the men go ape.

Over the next few years, I overshot Prince's height by a good foot.  And then I got my growth spurt.  I matured into a pasty-white, unmysterious girl, size 8-running-to-10, about as tempestuous as oatmeal, and one of the Breastless Wonders of the Modern World.  I'm middle-aged and still praying for those Apollonias.  I don't think the Almighty is going to oblige.

For consolation, I study male psychology.

Such as it is. 

If I can't ever look like Apollonia, maybe I can figure out why she triggered Prince's Jungle Love, Oh dee oh dee oh.

WHAT DO MEN WANT?  (FREUD DIDN'T ASK; HE KNEW ALREADY)

According to my research, what men think is "hot" is determined by the inherited biological preference of their forefathers for fertile women.  They are programmed to spread their seed where it's likely to take root and grow; they only appear to be as indiscriminate as your average dandelion.  The (straight) human male evolved to be attracted to certain female endowments: 

• Long, shiny hair is evidence that a woman can carry a healthy child, because long, lustrous tresses indicate several years of good health in the woman who grew them.  That, or a darn good stylist.
• Big eyes make it easier for men to spot evidence of disease, and also for them to read our emotions.  Or try.
• Gentleman prefer blondes, in cultures where this is an option, because blonde hair is a more trustworthy indicator of good health than brown hair.  Men can see lice, cooties, scabrous scalp conditions, cancerous moles, seeping lesions, and stuff like that more easily on a blonde.  I didn't read this anywhere; it's just a hypothesis. I am brunette.
• Blue or light-colored eyes make it easier for men to see our pupils dilating, to know whether their advances are working or not (they need all the clues that they can get). 
• Huge perky breasts are evidence that we are not too old to bear children (or they'd be hanging down around our knees) and that any prospective babies won't starve to death.  Therefore, men's most revered lust puppets look like milk factories on the verge of an explosion.  The bigger the breasts, the more easily men can spot signs of aging.  Bigger boobs sag more quickly in the post-menopausal female.
• Round bottoms are evidence that we have the circumference to give birth without keeling over dead.
• Men like their women small and soft-spoken because they display less resistance to being plowed and sown than sharp, loud Amazonian types like me.  When I curl my lip in scorn, I have shrink-ray vision.
• And men like their women naked, or as nearly naked as possible, because it saves them the tiresome work of persuading and undressing.  Subconsciously, they are calculating the time savings of weeks or maybe even months where this dame is concerned—time that could be devoted to another conquest. 

WHY PLAYBOY OUTSELLS PLAYGIRL (AND ALWAYS WILL)

To women, this is the most idiotic idea in the world, but for men, generic female nudity and their personal virility are one and the same.  Men feel studly while looking at airbrushed photos of complete strangers.  This is so hard-wired into them that they even get turned on by cartoons of naked women.  I heard of a guy who got fixated on—I swear this is true—Jessica Rabbit.  Dude.  It's a drawing.  You can't be serious.

Furthermore, men NEVER get sick of seeing naked women. Never.  A man could work for Playboy from age 20 to 90, and still be gawking at centerfolds at 95.  Hugh Hefner is living proof--a perennially green-around-the-gills geezer who, in a recent TV interview, referred to his recent acquisition of centerfold sisters as a "twofer." Hef is what, 100?  Dirty old men seem like evolutionary overkill to me.  On the other hand, men have to overcome the aversion of women toward the crushing workload on our side of the equation.  Given the humongous pain in the butt of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering, the human race would probably be extinct by now if men weren't leering lechers from puberty to death.

Now, we women are not excited by the sudden sight of a strange naked man.  AT ALL.  Guys, are you listening?  A naked man, cropping up out of nowhere, alarms and repulses us, because our fore-mothers in ancient times often rightly saw this as a sign that they were about to be raped.  And then stoned, burned, hanged, drawn and quartered, or in really serious trouble if they got pregnant.  At best, women are bored by naked men:  if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all.  Yawnsville.  A cartoon of a naked man would simply make us crack up laughing.  Yep, that's what they look like, all right.  Hilarious.

So all of my careful study (about why men want women who look like Apollonia) makes me feel better.  Well, no, actually, it doesn't.  Not really.  But I understand better. 

Men.  What can be done with them, really?  They don't mean to make us all feel hideous.  They just want to be daddies, on some level, when they steal our Victoria's Secret catalogs.  And when any woman, anywhere, takes off her clothes and they happen to see it, they get the delusion that they are manlier for her having disrobed, that she is disrobing just for them, and that somehow their genes will carry on.  Only God knows why.

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES

There are some mysteries which still baffle me:  Why do men also want us absolutely hairless (except for the shiny manes) and thin as a rail (except fore-starboard and aft-leeward)?  There is no evolutionary or psychological explanation.  If anything, extra fat stores makes us more likely to be fertile, and a little hair (not sasquatch hair; just a little here and there) indicate testosterone.  They need us to have a little testosterone, or they will get no action at all.  But then perhaps really tall and hairy cavewomen could grab their own clubs, back in the day, and crack a randy caveman's skull wide open, and today's man has reacted to the opposite extreme, and goes drooling hog wild over girlish women with Brazilian bikini waxes (you first, buddy).

Maybe, subconsciously, men assume that these skeletal and surgically-enhanced women, whom they think are the epitome of female sexiness, could survive multiple pregnancies by living off their massive stores of silicone.  I'd like to see that.  Now if you'll pardon me, there is some Ben & Jerry's in the fridge with my name on it.

An Addendum for My Guy Friends

For every rule there is an exception. 

There are men out there who are attracted to smart, "real" women, warts and all, who are their equals and can look them eye to eye without 5" heels.  Men who scoff at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.  And in the first rays of moonlight, if you have faith and are very, very still, faeries appear.

[Raindrop art used, and tinted purple, by special permission of Myjanee.com Graphic Creations.  This art is copywritten and is neither free use nor public domain.  Janee's wonderful Photoshop tutorials are available online at http://wwwmyjanee.com.]