"Pages and pages of Naked Guys," it said, "for no good reason."

The fact that I pulled a copy from the rack and flipped through the pages in search of the cover's promise was reason enough for the magazine to include that tantalizing text on its cover. After finding the hunks and determining that they were worthy of endless ogling, I bought the issue, thereby making a small contribution to the magazine's continued success.

The cover wasn't entirely honest. The guys didn't fill "pages and pages," and, unlike the pics in Playgirl which leave nothing to the imagination except what you'd do with the studs if given the chance, these guys' private parts remained private. As much as I love those parts, I have to love a man's entire package before heeding the call of his open zipper. These boys were beauties so I didn't feel cheated.

Some men may feel cheated, however, if they're tempted to measure their own attractiveness against the sex gods whom the media have made into objects of mass worship. We hear a lot about women and how their self-esteem is often linked to body image. Women without an ounce of fat on their frames nonetheless diet and exercise to maintain the slim figure that the media promotes as the feminine ideal. Full-figured women and even those with nothing more than a comfortable amount of baby fat work even harder to meet the standard and rarely achieve it.

What about men?

Heterosexual men once took pride in their lack of vanity. A pot belly was indicative of a healthy appetite, a desire to put "meat on your bones," and a taste for beer, a drink so lacking in pretension, as well as anything resembling a pleasant taste, that it spells VIRILITY. Men who favored wine, or primped before a mirror, or had their hair "styled" rather than cut, could only be fags, and generally were.

Nor did real men fuss over their wardrobes. Simple solid colors were the rule. The man in the gray flannel suit dominated the business world, but homosexuals dominated the arts and used their influence to subvert society's norms.

Among the queers was Tennessee Williams whose 1947 drama, A Streetcar Named Desire, featured a pre-flab Marlon Brando setting Broadway ablaze by appearing on-stage in a torn T shirt. Author Gore Vidal credits Williams with showing "the male not only as sexually attractive in the flesh but as an object for...the lust of women."

It may have been the playwright's suspected homosexuality (later confirmed by himself) that made his acknowledgment of desire for the male so provocative. Why else would MGM's Tarzan films of the 30s and 40s attract comparatively little controversy even as gay men delighted in how prominently Johnny Weissmuller's physique was displayed on-screen? When Weissmuller mounted that vine and swung across the make-believe African skies of the studio back-lot, gay boys everywhere hoped a breeze would blow his loincloth skyward and reveal the anatomical wonder that really made him King of the Jungle.

Once it was established that a man could be a sex object, it was time to show he could be pretty, too. Androgyny in men would become a fact of life with the rise of rock and roll in the 50s. It was one thing for a flaming queen like Little Richard to cross the line segregating the genders, but even the overtly heterosexual Elvis Presley did some trespassing by wearing mascara and dressing in gold lame, the latter at the recommendation of Liberace, the entertainment world's most flamboyant fairy.

Following the example of Elvis and the rock and roll rebels he inspired, straight men broke free from the rigid dress code of earlier generations and started strutting their stuff without shame. Now, as men keep in shape with regular visits to health clubs (which their stogie smoking ancestors would have called a gym), the appreciation of male beauty is as out of the closet as the gay men who do much of the appreciating.

Beautiful men are everywhere. I suspect the reason Playgirl now wraps each issue in plastic is to remind its "readers" that they still show penises, just about the only part of the male anatomy not readily viewable elsewhere. The glossy pages of mainstream magazines like GQ and Vanity Fair offer ads populated by dreamy sex gods in various states of undress, and even TV Guide is celebrating stud worship by giving a recent cover to bare-chested Calvin Klein model Travis Fimmel, the gorgeous blonde who'll inherit Tarzan's loincloth in a new television series.

But if you don't look like Travis or the other sex gods who define male beauty in the media, what are your chances of attracting a lover?

Pretty good, actually.

Like Hollywood, Madison Avenue sells fantasy and illusion. Those fortunate enough to build a lucrative career on their physical charms are carefully chosen based on how closely their attributes adhere to the most widely accepted standard of beauty.

Millions of dollars in product sales rest on their beautiful shoulders and nothing can be left to chance. It's hard to imagine any straight woman or gay man not wanting to make love to a pretty boy like Travis Fimmel. Everyone would likely agree that he is perfection incarnate. But that doesn't mean a sizable number of women and men wouldn't find men who look nothing like Travis equally attractive.

In the real world in which most of us have no choice but to live, the standards are more flexible. A stud as breathtaking as Travis is in short supply, anyway, and the competition for his attention is fierce. He can't go home with everyone, and he may even go home alone. Just like the beautiful woman whom men dare not approach, the hottest man can intimidate his admirers and never be asked for a date. And if he knows he's gorgeous, he may be too arrogant to do the asking himself.

The male supermodels are beautiful, and they are real, but they remain fantasy figures whom most of us will meet only on the newsstand and the TV screen. And no matter how many of us agree that they are gorgeous, beauty is still in the eye of the beholder. So don't despair if you're not quite Playgirl material. Like Christina Aguilera says in that song, "You're beautiful." Carole King, a songstress from an earlier era, said it even better: "You're beautiful as you feel."

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