Media Platforms Design Team
I've been a beautiful woman for fifty days, and no one has compared me to a summer's day. No one has said my lips are like rose blossoms or my throat is as smooth as alabaster.
Men don't have time for that anymore. We live in the age of transparency. Say what you mean and mean what you say. As in:
"You are a very pretty lady."
"I think you are very attractive."
"You look very pretty."
I've been approached by more than six hundred men, and that's one of the big themes I've discovered in their method: Cut to the chase.
The directness has its charms, but like everything else about being a beautiful woman, it has its dark side as well. One suitor tried to seduce me with this line: "I would like to stalk you." Another said, "I am in a committed relationship but am looking for a girl on the side." Honest? Sure. To the point? Yes. Creepy? As hell.
I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me back up. I stumbled into my role as a hot woman. It wasn't premeditated. As a general rule, I dislike female impersonation. I have too many bad associations of men in skirts -- Benny Hill, Uncle Milty, Idi Amin. But sometimes there are good -- or at least excusable -- reasons to pose as a female.
The reason in this case is my two-year-old son's nanny, Michelle. She's a stunning woman. Before my wife and I hired her, I thought that hot nannies existed only in vintage Penthouse Forum letters and Aaron Spelling dramas. But Michelle -- though I've changed her name for this story -- is real. She's twenty-seven and looks like a normal-lipped Angelina Jolie. She's sweet, funny, has a smile straight out of a cruise-line commercial, and wears adorable tank tops.
No one can believe quite how beautiful my nanny is. Among our friends, Jude Law's name comes up about twice a week. Michelle is so enchanting, my wife has actually given me permission to have an affair with her, à la Curb Your Enthusiasm. Of course, she only made the offer because she knew there was no chance Michelle would ever be interested. Michelle is too sweet, too Catholic, too loyal, too young. It's like giving me permission to become a linebacker for the Dolphins.
In any case, Michelle remains bafflingly single. So my wife and I decided to help her find a boyfriend. How about Internet dating, we suggested? Michelle balked. She's shy. She's not a big fan of e-mail. Her Internet's down. And aren't all the guys on those sites the kind that have a drawerful of ball gags?
We told her that's an outdated stereotype. We'd help her out. Or I would, since my job is editing and writing. I'd sign her up for a dating site, create a profile, sift through her suitors, and cowrite her e-mails. I'd be her online bouncer, bodyguard, censor, and Cyrano. All she'd have to do is give me some input and allow a few guys to buy her lattes.
She agreed. And even started to like the idea. She wrote her own introductory essay. ("I want someone who will make me laugh at the littlest thing.") We clicked her preferences (fish and dogs are the best pets) and uploaded seven smiley, PG-rated photos with nothing more risqué than an exposed shoulder or two.
At 8:00 P.M. on a Wednesday, a couple of hours after Michelle had gone home, her profile was approved and popped up online. I'd been anxious about this. What if it went unnoticed for weeks, gathering dust in an obscure corner of the Internet?
No need to worry. Her profile was viewed within the first three minutes. Then again a minute later. The page-view counter shot up to eight, fourteen, twenty. Not quite Huffington Post numbers but brisk traffic. And then the e-mails started pinging in. A good dozen before I went to bed. I know that technically these guys aren't e-mailing me. Still, it's an exhilarating feeling to be so desired, if only by proxy. (And mind you, I did type in the essay and clean up her grammar.)
Esquire Editor-at-Large A.J. Jacobs is the author of A Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. The book, published by Simon &Schuster, will be out this October. You can buy it by
A.J. Jacobs is the author of 'The Puzzler,' along with several previous New York Times bestsellers such as 'The Year of Living Biblically' and 'Thanks a Thousand.' He lives in New York with his family and was once the answer to 1 Down in the New York Times crossword puzzle.
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