Hot Men Alert: From romantic to macho – our perfect fantasy male icons revealed…

The feline: 

“Tao, my elegant and subtle cat, inspired an image in my head. Men are often loud and grumpy. So I imagine a catlike man with green eyes. He winds his way into my decor, he hides in the depth of silence. An ephemeral presence. Subtle, hypersensitive to my moods, and always in harmony with my emotions. He then falls asleep like a cat, against me, rolled into a cosy knot.”

– Marie-Laure, 51 years

The chieftain: 

“He leans over the sink, his razor creating a furrow in the white foam. Then he puts on a clean shirt, perfectly ironed. So this must be a married man, who does his part earning enough to support his family. He is the male provider, who takes the future of his tribe in hand. It reassures me because I know that whatever happens tonight, there will be bison on my plate.”

– Sylvie, 47 years

The handyman: 

“Tall, broad-shouldered, down-to-earth, the man is leaning over an open a car engine. He observes, analyses, understands, and whips a pair of pliers and a screw. Then a series of clangs and chings, before he straightens. He reaches over, turns the keys, and the engine starts to roar. Isn’t it great, a man that turns problems into solutions?”

– Florence, 54 years

The muscular romantic: 

“The shoulders of a rugby player, with thirty kilos of solid muscle to chase a ball and love handles to grip onto… He is capable of reading me a poem backwards, in the middle of a bridge in Saint-Martin, Paris, just to help me relax. This is my fantasy movie about my life, and I’ll never get tired of it.”

– Dawn, 26 years

The statue: 

“The image that comes to me is that of a man sitting on the floor, one leg extended, the other bent and arms resting on his knee … he has the profile of an ancient Greek statue, a perfectly smooth body. I love his passivity, his availability, and the ability to daydream about him, to desire him, and to imagine our bodies entwined… Me, I married a terrible macho.”

– Claire, 48 years

The cliché: 

“A little bit of daydreaming, and presto! I programme in my head my dream man, Jude Law in the Dior ad, dark hair, lagoon blue eyes, so sexy… I know that with him the night will be scorching hot, of the Brazilian-samba variety. This is an image that emerges at night, when my husband’s snoring wakes me.”

– Catherine, 43 years

The aloof:

“He is immersed in reading his newspaper, at times extremely present, and very little at others. I find it deeply sexy and masculine. You see guys like that in Hitchcock’s films. In life, my man lives in another city, we see each other during the weekends, there is never such downtime found in a couple. I miss it.”

– Jeanne, 44 years

The enigmatic:

“It has a name, that image that makes me feel good: John Malkovich. The actor who reconciles the masculine and feminine. I love that idea that, behind the sphinx, there is a sensitive and delicate being. And like in Being John Malkovich, I would have liked to slip into the body of this charming dandy, in order to draw from it some sort of energy that would allow me to understand men.”

– Frédérique, 38 years

The virtuoso: 

“It’s summer. A muscular, bronzed man doing the dishes, shirtless. He stacks them with skill…will it collapse? Nope, all in perfect balance. It always moves me. Especially since this man is my real-life Romeo. Sure enough of his manhood not to feel ridiculous in front of a stack of plates to wash. It is an exciting mix.”

–  Delphine, 41 years

 

Laurence Cochet