Beauty Is Only Skin Deep; Sexy Is All in the Head

E ye-popping cleavage, rippling muscle, form-squeezing rags--these are the things that spell s-e-x-y on men and women, or do they?

If you’ve seen the new Guess ad campaign, you know Madison Avenue thinks mega-bosomed blondes are sexy. And what about those Calvin Klein ads featuring men built like thoroughbred horses?

Do the rest of us have even a chance of, um, attracting the opposite sex? What is sexy, after all?

SHE: I look at the ridiculously voluptuous blonde in that Guess ad, and I get furious. With a little help, she can sit up.

What a rotten message to send out to the female youth of America: Get major breast implants, throw yourself on a haystack and you’ll not only be sexy, you’ll be HAPPY.

Wrong. Happiness comes from a confidence born of high self-esteem. That’s sexy.

HE: Agreed. So why are we living in a world in which the C&R; Clothiers ads continue to exist?

The message there, about as subtle as a Louisville Slugger to the base of the skull, is that if you look like a gigolo from a vaguely undefinable European country and you scowl like somebody’s just told you your Alfa Romeo blew a trans, then you’re sexy.

Sure, they’re in good shape, but they look lobotomized. Madison Avenue will never learn that the primary human sexual organ is the brain. The brain, stupid!

SHE: I’ve heard you go on and on and on about Candice Bergen. Do you find her brainy and sexy? Or just brainy? Or sexy because she’s brainy?

HE: She’s just too damn good to be true. Brains, sophistication, beauty, and she’s funny. Lots of women have one of those qualities, maybe two if they’re really extraordinary, but all? It’s almost unfair.

With her, I’ve passed the acid test several times: I can watch the episodes of “Murphy Brown” in which her character is home, dressed in rumpled clothes after a sleepless night and looks like pure hell, and I’m still in love with her. If she were just another vacant cookie with a pneumatic chest and a soap opera contract, I’d switch to the Home Shopping Network in a microsecond.

Is there a corresponding female viewpoint?

SHE: I find men like Woody Allen-- pre-scandal Woody Allen--appealing. And for the same reasons you like Candice.

His brains, sophistication and wit are irresistible.

In my book, any man who is at once brainy, clean-cut and witty is sexy (Daniel Day-Lewis, Michael Crawford and Joseph Biden come to mind).

Here’s what I find unsexy in men: sloppy table manners, raw language, unbrushed teeth, dirty finger- or toenails and talk that is forever me -centered.

Do you have a list of turnoffs?

HE: It’s pretty short. In the main, I really love women, and I often prefer their company to the company of men. But I find it awfully difficult to like a woman who makes it clear fairly early on that she’d rather bust a guy in the chops than kiss him on the cheek.

That men-are-scum shibboleth is starting to wear paper-thin. If I want to get needlessly beat up, I’ll go to a biker bar and kick over all the custom Harleys in the parking lot. On the other hand, if a woman smiles at me with a warm, embracing, open face and kind eyes, the only problem she’ll ever have with me is how to put all the love letters I send her on microfilm.

SHE: Hillary Rodham Clinton looked wonderfully sexy in Women’s Wear Daily last week. She was pictured in Donna Karan’s cold shoulder dress--a long, black turtleneck sheath with shoulder cutouts. Very tasteful and youthful. She wore it to a governors’ dinner at the White House.

I can’t remember a First Lady wearing a body-hugger like that, can you?

And, while we’re at it, do you think a First Lady should stay clear of revealing clothing? Dare she let the world know she looks like a billion in a bathing suit?

HE: Sure. I think it would only serve to underscore the apparent love affair a lot of us seem to be having with the notion of youth in the White House. I hardly think HRC is going to suddenly become exhibitionistic (which is a bit of a turnoff, anyway), but I don’t think she’s going to hide her light under a bushel either. This is not your father’s Oldsmobile. This isn’t Eleanor Roosevelt we’re talking about here.

And speaking of Eleanor . . . what needs to be remembered is that beauty, even sexiness, often has little to do with the part of a person we can analyze visually. Mrs. Roosevelt came in for a lot of unkind jokes because of her physical homeliness, but only among people who had no opportunity to know her.

After a long, friendly visit to a military installation in England during World War II, one GI couldn’t contain himself as he watched the First Lady drive off in a jeep. He looked at his friends and shook his head.

“Ain’t she a honey?” he said.