^Just my $0.02, but it may have something to do with an...alleged mentality along the lines of... "sexy" being a sexist term, or...something.
Or at least, that it's almost always directed at women, from men.
Again, just a theory. I have a feeling it'll be disproved in a heartbeat.
Well...the thread was started and named by a female, unless
DevilEyes is fibbing to us!
Terms for attractiveness are tricksy, that's for sure. In the TNG forum, for example, there's a thread about whether Troi is "hot," and some of the posters differentiate rather sharply between "hot," "beautiful," "lovely" and so on. And in this thread, there has been quite a bit of differentation, too (e.g., discussions about whether Ezri is "sexy" or merely "cute"). No doubt those who have differentiated have perfectly good reasons for this, but...I suspect that the reasons won't be the same for everybody.
Attractiveness is all subjective, of course, but what's also subjective is degree of attractiveness, as well as what term a person chooses to describe that degree of attractiveness.
Me, I don't tend to use the word "sexy" very often in real life - or "hot" for that matter, although I used them on the BBS. They just aren't really my style, I guess - maybe I'm too inhibited, or perhaps I'm simply too stuffy in my language choices. I was pretty sure I knew what DevilEyes meant by it, though, so I chose accordingly.
But not using those terms does hamper me. Out here in the real world, I'd probably use "handsome" or "really good-looking" most of the time, which are fine, but it is definitely technically possible to be handsome and yet not be all that sexually attractive. And of course, there are plenty of men who aren't handsome but exude sex appeal.
It can all come down to the tone of voice in which a word is used - that's probably why I write "sexy" or "hot" here on the BBS even though I don't use those terms that often in real life. In real life, I'd use context and tone of voice to differentiate between something like "He's handsome enough, I guess," which means, "He's good looking but does nothing for me" and "Oh, he is so handsome!" (or "gorgeous") which is pretty much identical to "Man, is he hot!" It's hard to do that here, of course, tone of voice being a difficult thing to convey in a post on a bulletin board.
I think I need to expand my vocabulary. Surely there is something I can use that's descriptive but less slangy than "hot"?
