It’s easy to get caught up in the good qualities – when arbitrarily judging a hot boy, I’d always prefer to focus on the things that make me want to tear his pants off than tear his face off. But someone asked me to write about the negative things and so – slavishly devoted to the whims of people off of Twitter – I thought I’d have a crack. Here are my top 5 turn-offs.

1. Preening

This manifests in a number of different physical forms. As a general rule I don’t like people who are too muscular, clean-cut or well-dressed. It’s not that a solid six-pack isn’t a lovely thing to behold, or that guys in suits aren’t jaw-droppingly sexy – they are – but if you look too preened it demonstrates a commitment to That Sort Of Thing that I just can’t hope to match.

Your muscles don’t make me think ‘oooh, he works out’, but ‘shit, he’ll expect me to work out.’

2. Narrow-mindedness

This includes the obvious (racists, homophobes) as well as the not-quite-so-obvious – people who’d laugh at a friend who confessed to a foot fetish, or make their partner feel guilty about a particularly spicy sexual past. Understandably I never end up fancying these people. If your instant reaction to something different or new is to either ban it, mock it, or kill it with sticks, then we’re probably not going to get on.

3. Excessive confidence

I don’t mean someone who is just confident in their actions and their looks – these people are super-hot. I mean someone so confident they aren’t interested in other people at all.

People who act like what comes out of your mouth is just a tedious compulsory interlude between the end of their last sentence and the beginning of their next. People who say “That’s nice, now about me…” People who actively yawn if you tell an anecdote that doesn’t involve them. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve fucked my fair share of them – but I’ve now resolved not to shag anyone who’s more likely to get hard looking into a mirror than at me.

4. Excessive shyness

Socially awkward nerds, unite – shyness is not necessarily a barrier to getting laid. There’s something deeply sexy about taking a guy who is nervous and awkward and coaxing him out of his shell until he’s tying my ankles to a bedpost and calling me ‘bitch’ when he fucks me. Shyness itself is not a turn-off.

However, if you are too shy it becomes a barrier beyond which it is impossible to see. It’s not that I don’t fancy guys who are excessively shy, it’s that I am unable to tell whether I fancy them or not. If you won’t speak to me, tell me about yourself, make a stupid joke or confess to an embarrassing story, I will never know whether you’re the sort of guy I want to ride off into the sunset.

5. Nagging/neediness

“But I really want to see you tonight.”

“I notice you haven’t replied to my last email.”

“Can’t you just stay with me this weekend?”

Cards on the table, here – I’m a cold-hearted cunt. If you act casual and treat me like an overly-sexual best friend, chances are we can stay together for as long as you decide it’s fun. But if you act as if I’m the solution to all your emotional needs I’ll grow bemused and then very quickly irritated.

I love it when you want me, but I cannot bear you to need me. The bottom line is that the puppy-dog keenness that might go down well with an actual girlfriend just fills me with guilt and – occasionally, though I shudder to admit it – disgust. By nagging me to see you, email you, love you, you fool me into thinking that these are things I didn’t want to do in the first place. You stop being a person that I want to spend time with and become a task to cross off my to-do list.

In conclusion

You might have noticed that (barring elements of the first item) this isn’t just an exhaustive list of physical characteristics, like a judgmental dating site profile. The reason is probably obvious to those of you who are regular readers. Although I have a definite physical ‘type’ when it comes to men (would that dangerously hot guy from My Chemical Romance please stand up) looks aren’t that high on my ‘do I want to fuck this dude?’ checklist. It’s nice if you’re pretty, fit might be a bonus, melty dark eyes are a tasty cherry on top, but ultimately the most important things about you are the things that I can’t see.

I don’t want a pretty fuck, I want a pretty good fuck, and you don’t get to be one of those just by going to the gym and waxing your chest hair.

Let it henceforth be known that you may do anything you like with my friends, or my casual fucks. If they consent to it then you may touch them, kiss them and shag them in whatever depraved manner and in whatever tantric position gives the most pleasure to the two of you at the time.

But if you touch the boy I love I will tear you into a billion pieces. I will scatter those pieces across the globe, then spend the rest of my life retracing my steps so that I can stamp on each individual one of them until you are ground into a shower of dust.

Jealousy isn’t as bad as we think

The key argument against jealousy is that it implies ownership. I don’t think that’s true. Ownership of a certain kind is good – whether your relationship is open or monogamous there’s a delicious thrill in being able to say “he’s mine.”

It doesn’t mean that you own that person completely, and feeling jealous does not in fact give you any rights at all over the other person. But part of mutual love is giving a tiny bit of yourself up to the other person. And being jealous is your way of saying “I give a shit about this. This is significant.”

But there’s a world of difference between being a bit possessive – “I want you all to myself you scrummy pile of gorgeousness” – and being so jealous that it becomes destructive – “I don’t want you to see your best friend any more because I’m worried that you fancy them.”

Jealousy is still really fucking bad

The key problem with jealousy is that it is arational. There’s nothing inherently green-eyed-and-evil about getting angry with your monogamous partner for snogging someone else – they broke your agreement, so you have a right to be angry. Your possession of this person extends up to (but not beyond) an expectation that they don’t have sexual contact with anyone else.

The problem with real, steaming, burning jealousy is that it is prompted by things that – to a rational observer – are not a cause for rage at all. Some wholly innocent events have our inner Iago stampeding out from the recesses of our brain screaming “I like not that!”

The receipt of a flirty text. A look interpreted as meaningful. A feeling that your partner’s too close to a certain person. A desire – a need – to know not just what they want to tell you but all the private things in their head as well.

And some people feel this more than others – some have a tendency to quiz their partners, go through pockets and trample on their privacy to get at whatever their gut tells them must be the truth. So as kind, understanding humans we need to try and comprehend why our partners feel this way. I’m not talking about giving in and letting them strip-search you because you were late home from work, but having patience and being willing to discuss the issue can – in my experience – do a hell of a lot to assuage the arational anger that is jealousy.

You’re probably better than I am

I am a terribly jealous person. I’ve destroyed nights out because I worried that boys weren’t paying me enough attention. I’ve ranted about that bitch from their work who won’t stop flirting. I’ve – oh God, my blood runs cold to write the words down – I’ve read a boy’s emails.

As expected, none of these things did me any good. Because at the end of the day, although it’s nice to know you’re wanted, no one’s partner ever said “hey, do that cute thing where you interrogate me about my close friends again, before reading my text messages behind my back.”

So just as we have a responsibility to be faithful (whatever ‘faithful’ means within your relationships), and a responsibility to be understanding when our partners occasionally swerve into unnecessary jealous rages, those of us who do tend towards jealousy also have a responsibility to be rational.

Our partners have chosen us, and that’s really significant – they’re not going to un-choose us in a hurry. And the majority of people are more likely to stumble into an innocent situation that causes one’s jealousy to flare up than they are to casually fuck a passing stranger. Boring, I know, but it’s the rational truth.

So, in relationships as elsewhere in life, we need to ignore our emotions occasionally and examine things with a rational head. Consider whether an innocent explanation is more likely. Step away from our partner’s phone and avoid reading their texts. We need to listen to our brain rather than the seething rage in our gut. When our inner Iago says “I like not that” we need to tell him to fuck off.

As a woman who has had sex with a man on more than one occasion, I felt like I might be well-placed to give you some advice on how to become sexy. Here goes.

When I’ve asked men I’ve slept with “what makes me sexy?”, answers have ranged from ‘your enthusiasm for dick’ through ‘your big, fat, argumental mouth’ to ‘the fact that you live quite close by and I’m incredibly lazy.’ But luckily we don’t have to rely on flattery dished out by men I’ve known – FHM has the answer.

Today FHM released its ‘100 sexiest women’ edition and I, completely unscientifically and with pint in hand, logged the key things that stood out about the women in the top 100. See my ‘methodology‘ for more info.

I then spoke to the collection of liberal, pervy, lovely people who follow me on Twitter, and asked what they thought was sexy. The results are in:

What makes a woman sexy, according to FHM

 

What makes a woman sexy, according to Twitter

Quite the difference, no? It turns out that becoming the sexiest woman in the world might be more difficult than I originally thought.

What does FHM say about ‘sexiness’?

Most of the things mentioned in the bios of FHM’s top 100 were career-related. In fact, almost all of the copy focused either on what the lady had featured in (TV shows, films, magazines, adverts) or songs she had sung. Curiously, although many of them mentioned the women’s careers, there were only 11 mentions of specific achievements – ‘breaking a Guinness World Record’ or ‘kayaking the Amazon’, for instance.

Although there were a few glimpses of their personal interests and passions (one of the top 100 sexiest women campaigns to save Great White Sharks, another is a noted philanthropist) the majority of the copy focused, unsurprisingly, on dribbling odes to their ‘legginess’ or bodies ‘sexy enough to bend time and space.’

What does Twitter say about ‘sexiness’?

Twitter, on the other hand, focused far more on a girl’s attitude – her individuality and confidence were key indicators of sexiness, as were wit and intelligence.

Special mentions go to words like ‘edgy’ and ‘ballsy’, which I personally appreciate in a woman. One enthusiastic gentlemen assured me that the sexiest thing in a woman was her offering ‘even the slightest indication that she’d be willing to touch me.’

But the overall prize goes to the four people who pointed out (though no doubt most others were thinking similar things) that it’s all completely subjective. Personally, I love a girl with attitude – a loudmouthed, argumentative, filthy creature who could beat me in both a fist-fight and an argument. Someone with pretty eyes, a huge arse and spectacularly hard nipples.

How to become the sexiest woman in the world

Depressing though it is to read FHM, it does help you to understand the tedium that comes with consensus. Yes, most of the women in the top 100 were similar – they all had jobs in the public eye, so were presumably quite outgoing, they were all slim and feminine, with lovely tits. Most of them had long hair and almost all of them were wearing clothes even my mother wouldn’t let me leave the house in.

But that’s just what happens when you get thousands of people to choose sexiness based on pictures of women they’ve seen in magazines. Their sample is limited, for a start, and there are so many people voting that things will eventually work their way towards a democratic middle-ground – the breadth and variety of human sexual preference won’t get a look in. You’ll inevitably end up with 100 beautiful yet very similar singers/models/actresses in their pants.

When you ask people a question – an open one – about what they find attractive, ‘sexiness’ becomes far more inclusive. Suddenly to become the sexiest woman in the world you no longer have to choose from a limited range of careers, associate yourself with someone famous or freeze your arse off in cheap lingerie.

If you can be confident, intelligent, make someone laugh or melt at your smile, you’re onto a winner. If you have a twinkle in your eye or a penchant for filth or even just a special something that makes you different then someone – somewhere – will probably want to fuck you.

Well, someone on Twitter at any rate.

Methodology: Let it not be said that I am not a rigorous motherfucker. What was my methodology? I logged things that were mentioned in tweets, using what I believe is technically described as a ‘tally chart on the back of an envelope.’  I then logged things from the descriptions and accompanying photos that appeared in FHM’s ‘100 sexiest women’ supplement. If it wasn’t mentioned, it wasn’t logged. For example, I know that at least three of the people in the supplement have had a sex tape/sexy pictures leaked, but it was only mentioned on one occasion, so was only counted once.