interesting. I like smart and tall men. My father is smart and tall (like, way tall -- 6'6".) I am also smart and tall. My mother is smart and short (she's 5'5", on a good day) (small aside for the bitterness of all the times I see a 6' + guy with a short woman). I do not like men shorter than me as a general rule, but if they have a good personality and great butt, I can overlook it. no pun intended. I can never overlook stupidity, I don't care if I can bounce a ROLL of quarters off your butt.

ALthough, if I were to write a letter to the editor about this essay, I've pretty much doomed myself to its being published with all its typoes intact.

(But I mean really, it was the unnecessary use of "whom." These days, you can totally get away with using "who" where "whom" is formally proper, but the reverse is not legit, and smacks of being irritatingly and ignorantly hoity-toity, like all those people who overcorrect "me" into "I" wherever they see it.

Go for it, Nutty.

Aha! That's why I like (or don't dislike) younger men -- my dad is babyfaced.

There are more obscure examples than this. There was the famous t-shirt study a couple of years ago, where women were asked to rate the smell of t-shirts that had been worn for 24 hours be various male subjects. The women preferred the smell of the t-shirts worn by men who had the same HLA (immune system) genes that their fathers had. Mother's HLA genes didn't matter.

Do both BF and dad have eyes? Two apiece? Two legs apiece? Not lemurs, either of them?

Okay, yes, I admit it. They have more in common besides male and smart. Let's see...

2 eyes, ears, legs, arms, hands, feet, nostrils, lips, eyebrows
10 toes, fingers
internal organs
skin
speak English
live in the U.S.

Holy crap! I'm dating my father!

I can never overlook stupidity, I don't care if I can bounce a ROLL of quarters off your butt.

I think if you throw something big enough at a person, it will bounce nicely. If the person is dumb enough, he might let you use a brick. Probably there is an upper limit to the "anything will bounce" rule, so don't try a wrecking ball, tempting as it might be.

I'd heard that balding men have higher testosterone, on average. I may have heard this from the excellent testosterone episode of TAL.

In any case, I find some balding men sexy, e.g., Chris Meloni. My father and BF have full heads of hair, however.

I find some balding men sexy, e.g., Chris Meloni

Same here. And he's a perfect example. Also, Patrick Stewart.

The women preferred the smell of the t-shirts worn by men who had the same HLA (immune system) genes that their fathers had

Interesting. There are some guys whose smells creep me out sufficiently that I don't like to sit where they've sat. It's not that it's a bad smell. It's just a smell I don't want around/on me. I have no idea if I just like the smells of guys I like and am a bit of a drama queen when I don't, or what.

My Dad didn't start thinning on top until after I'd moved out. I think Paul's grandfather had hair until the chemo, but I didn't meet him until a few months before he died. Paul still has hair.

What does occasionally creep me out is that Paul and Dad have the same coloring. (Dark brown-black hair/greenish hazel eyes, olive skin.)

Though if I look at the dating data (even if I don't select just the males from the sample), light-to-medium brown hair, fair pinkish skin, and blue eyes is the most common combo. (Not that the sample size is really so huge as to matter.)