Best. Gay. Week. Ever! What Makes a Man Sexy?

SO WHAT MAKES A MAN SEXY? BESIDES EDITING A WEBSITE, OF COURSE! WAIT, THAT ISN'T SEXY?
This week AE reader Miz Liz started a forum topic titled What's Your Idea of Sexy? Since our readers are not at all interested in matters of the flesh, hardly anyone had any thoughts on the subject.

Right, and John McCain is actually a decent human being.

Actually folks had a lot of thoughtful things to say and got me thinking about what I find sexy. Basically, it's a number of different things that can be combined in a multitude of ways to get all sorts of various kinds of sexy. But what are those "things?" I've broken them down into the five categories that matter the most for me.

LOOKS
Let's face it, us men we are pretty visual creatures, and for most of us sexy starts at the surface. Which isn't to say it's all about looks, of course! More than once, I've met someone I thought was perfectly nice looking, but who didn't particularly send my crank whirling around the compass. But after chatting with them for a while and finding out they are smart, funny, kind, and so forth, I suddenly find myself thinking "Wait a second! You're much sexier than I realized!"

Of course, looks are also very arbitrary as what one person finds hot, might leave someone else baffled. (Case, in point: I find Jake Gyllenhaal to be smokin' hot while my partner wouldn't give him a second look if we passed him on the street. I know, I know! Cuckoo!)

Speaking of Jake, he pretty much typifies my ideal physically as I tend to go for the dark-haired, brown-eyed swarthy types who aren't all buffed out. Which is probably why I've completely fallen for Darren Criss and have a longstanding crush on Wilson Cruz. 

Jake Gyllenhaal, Darren Criss, Wilson Cruz

CONFIDENCE
Few things are sexier to me than a man comfortable in his own skin and at ease in the world. This kind of guy is secure enough in himself that he doesn't need to prove anything to anyone, especially not by putting other men down.  He's also just as confident in a three piece suit as he is dressed as a ballerina for Halloween because his confidence is based on who is and not what he looks like.

Note: this is not to be confused with being cocky which IMHO often stems from a place of insecurity and is anything but sexy.

So who I do think exudes this kind of sexiness? Broadway star Cheyenne Jackson exuded exactly this sort of sexiness when I interviewed him, and both George Clooney and Jensen Atwood come across that way as well. (And yes, they are all smoking hot.)

Cheyenne Jackson, George Clooney, Jensen Atwood

Next page! Brains are sexy too!