Pretty Boys

When I was growing up, I had a crush on a boy named Luke. He was blonde with big blue eyes and eyelashes so long that I swear I could feel a breeze when he blinked. This was in the midst of Star War craziness, so of course we girls couldn’t help but think of him as Luke Skywalker’s doppelganger. His hair was slightly wavy and long, and as he fought with “Darth Vader” during recess, my friends and I would watch and sigh. We all desperately wanted to be his Princess Leia. There was something about him, with his defined cheekbones and full lips, that was almost delicately pretty. He was a pretty boy, and we pre-pubescent girls couldn’t get enough of him.

This was only the first of many such crushes I went through – other pretty boy longings included the lead singer from Ah Ha, singing “Take On Me” with eyeliner firmly in place, Eric Stoltz and Andrew McCarthy as they pined after their leading ladies in their respective John Hughes films, and Knight Rider David Hasselhoff with his magical car Kitt. The pretty boys were ,well, so pretty it was hard for me to take my eyes off of them. But, in the back of my head, I always wondered “Does it take him longer to get ready than me?” and “I wish I could get my eyeliner to look like his!” While crushing on a pretty boy seems almost a rite of passage for female teens and tweens (just think about the success of those boy bands), the grownup pretty boy is not quite so cute or endearing.

Taylor liked to compare himself to Elvis (a pretty boy if there ever was one) in everything – looks, moves, his appearance. He spent hours on this, primping and preening, and no, he was not an Elvis impersonator (although this really could have been his calling). He spent so much time in the bathroom that he answered his phone in there (seriously). When we dated, I marveled at his penchant for upkeep that rivaled only someone along the lines of, say, Ivana Trump. He was fascinated with his looks, and this made him fascinating to me – but not as a potential dating partner. He became a train-wreck I couldn’t turn away from, an experiment result worth waiting for. But the day I noticed my makeup in disarray and a ring around his collar, I knew it was time to say goodbye to him.

While on a flight abroad, I had the luck of sitting next to a male model. A real, bona fide, male model (think Zoolander). He was tall and exotic and really stunning. His eyes slanted alluringly, his shoulders looked as if they were padded, and his cheekbones were sharp enough to cut something. I was more than a bit surprised when he began flirting with me, but knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. Turns out he was on his way to Paris for a month of back-to-back jobs. He showed me his portfolio via his iPhone and asked for feedback on how to pose his glorious body, what I thought of his sixpack, if I liked him better with short hair or long. I answered his queries with ease. We were interrupted only by the stewardess eyeing him like candy and saying, “Can I get you anything, baby?” I swear, I’m not making this up! He shrugged his massive shoulders and declined food; after all, he was on a serious calorie-restricted diet. He had lost sixty pounds to become a model and gave me his brownie so it wouldn’t tempt him. As we exited the plane, the crowds parted for us in a way I haven’t experienced since I happened to see fellow pretty boy Ralph Fiennes on a midtown sidewalk.

In the midst of this star treatment, I realized that grownup pretty boys are a lot like animals in a zoo. They are quite fun to visit in the cages that they have chosen to inhabit, but I have no desire to take them home and to attempt to raise them outside of their preferred captivity.