Thursday, November 15, 2012

The Dark Side


It's late now, almost midnight and I've been looking through my PRETTY MEN board over at Pinterest. Why? For a quick, cheap thrill I guess. But I noticed something I'd always kind of thought to myself and now have a little bit of proof due to the pinned pics of pretty men.
For some reason, I'm drawn to dark men. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, all do it for me. Of course there are those blondies with blues that NO ONE can resist and I can't and won't turn a blind eye to but most of the dudes on my board favor the dark side. I'm wondering if it's anything related to the opposites attract theory. When I was a child I had white-blonde hair and green eyes and pale skin to match. Basically the only thing that's changed is my hair color which grew from blonde to auburn to brown to black both with and without the assistance of hair coloring. Still the eyes and the skin remain and there's still that dark attraction for me. You'd think I'd be blazing my way over to those blondies like a comet than screaming and running away but it ain't so in my case.

For the sake of a little psychology, I think a part of the attraction harks back to a time when dark men were both threatening and powerful (or at least perceived to be) and lighter guys were more cerebral. I have fallen for a few cerebs myself, I can't lie here. But there's that sense of danger, of power, physical, emotional and mental that I attach to dark dudes.
While we're contemplating attraction theories, it seems to go the opposite way as well. A lot of dark guys and girls favor the blondes. But then, that's hard to figure into the equation: blonde hair has been prized highly in numerous civilizations for numerous millennia, especially for women. Major sexual attraction goes without saying there. And inexplicably there are those of the same coloring of hair and eyes who like each other
I also swing between pretty—literally pretty—men's faces and those who can't be categorized as pretty at all but have some type of underlying threatening animalistic allure (The Lure of the Animal: The Khavorka! Seinfeld) and wild power whether they keep it distilled or let it roar out of control. And most of those guys are dark. (The subject of cut bodies is another blog post altogether.)
I've even started putting dark pretties in my books. Let me amend that. I've always put dark pretties in my books. Gavin McAllister in Future Imperfect, though British had my requisite dark hair and…well grey eyes…hey I was close.
What kind of men (or women for those writer guys out there) are you attracted to? Do you fancy a blonde or a brunette? What about those crazy red-heads? And eyes—the ultimate turn-on—blue? Black? Chocolate? Grey, green, hazel? Or does it even matter to you? Are you like me with a pattern of attraction or randomly magnetized to pretties of all coloring?