Too sexy for your stokies

2008-12-03 12:33

Chris Roper

I can't be the only person bitterly disappointed by David Moseley's last column on this website. I clicked on If you film it, they will come, and instead of the expected insight into the sexual tricks used by a popular columnist, his many paramours, and his video camera, I had to read a rational appraisal of religious movies.

Still, I took one thing away from the unfortunate experience, and it was this - we tend to believe what we want to believe. I was reminded of this by a story sent to me by a fan (okay, not actually a fan, someone who works at News24 - but we believe what we want to believe, remember), a story entitled SA men: We're so sexy.

Amazingly, South African men are world leaders in believing they are good looking. Seventy-eight percent of them - well, of us, I suppose I should say - believe we're sexy. I know Rod Stewart has just played Cape Town, but this is ridiculous.

I mean, this is a country where you can't even buy decent men's underwear - how can 78% of us think we're sexy? What are those men wearing?

Only Russian (80%) and Greek men (81%) "topped what researchers labelled the 'Adonis complex' of South African male species". This I can believe. If you're deluded enough to believe in communism, or in the case of Greece, that you can play soccer, you're more deluded than South Africans. We believe in Jacob Zuma, of course, so it is a fairly close thing, I concede that.

But let's think about that 78%. Does that mean that 22% of South African men believe they're not sexy? I doubt it. I bet it just means that 22% of them answered "fairly sexy".

Hair-raising

I liked the stat about "most likely to embrace the beard were men from Greece". I thought this contradicted a popular belief that Greek men in fact do not like practicing adventurous sex. Alas. This turned out to be a David Moseley headline moment - the survey was talking about actual beards.

And South African men are least likely to "embrace the beard" (surely they could have put that better?). Ninety percent of us agreed we like the clean-shaven look.

Eighty-eight percent of South African men use deodorant. Excuse me? What do the other 12% do, hang around smelling sexy? Rub a KFC rounder on their armpits and call it lunch?

This is as worrying a thing as that crazy ad for Mitchum deodorant, where they say, "so effective, you could skip a day". Does Mitchum realise how scary this is? Either they only expect you to shower once every two days, or their product is so awful that no amount of scrubbing can get it off.

By the way, the survey also had what is termed "good news for bald men who 'need not worry'" (bit late for that advice, how do you think they went bald in the first place?). Only 1% of respondents said that a full head of hair is necessary for someone to be handsome. Of course, 99% added "if you also have a Ferrari", but they always leave those bits out of surveys.

Chris Roper has a blog that he believes "is 78% sexy, and clean-shaven". Visit it on Chrisroper.co.za to bicker.

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