Image courtesy of Lookbook.nu

The world is a smorgasbord of hotties. This is not a surprise, especially if you're from Sweden or Southern California, where a disproportionate number of babes, models, hot chicks, and sexy coeds originate. For single men, the landscape is an almost mind-numbing swath of feminine beauty, and like browsing the farmer's market, the bachelors can look and date at will. There's a reason the word allure contains a word also used in fishing. Those with godlike powers of persuasion could easily maintain a casual dating regimen to cover much of the population of perfectly proportioned pulchritudinous princesses.

But what about men who are firmly entrenched in a relationship? Is it morally acceptable for attached males to scope out the cuties?

As one of those attached males, I have firsthand experience with this issue; living in Southern California, I have the blessing and curse of being confronted with the bountiful crop of beautiful women and the instinctual male urge to simply look. Forget lust, this is like driving by a horrible traffic collision. Like car accidents, women prompt autonomic ocular responses. And like rubbernecking, there's a sense that if not reprehensible, the gazing from afar is not exactly high value activity, especially if you're in a committed relationship to a woman you may have previously rubbernecked before you became attached to her.

Can guys make mental maps of the feminine representatives without falling into the soul-damning territory of adultery and fornication?

Here I will step out of my role as beleaguered man and step into the role of impartial observer, and point to Ace of Cakes and beta fish as an answer to the dilemma at hand.

Ace of Cakes is a television show that features a master baker and his team of elite pastry specialists creating a cake for a client; perhaps the cake is for a wedding, or a bar mitzvah, or in honor of a bicentennial. The cake created for each event is a work of art in its own right, and often is elaborately built with materials rivaling those used in large construction projects.

One gets the sense that these cakes are the most beautiful baked goods ever created, but after all the sawing and cutting and painting, the thought of tasting these cakes is almost abhorrent. Not only would it be a crime to destroy these works of art by cutting into and consuming them, but that even to do so would result in dissatisfaction; the cake is not meant to be eaten, only admired and appreciated.

Back to beleaguered hero: to men with a woman (beautiful or not) on their arm, other beautiful women are like the cakes baked by the Ace.

Put another way, the ladies pass in and out of the male consciousness like betas in a twenty gallon tank. We see them on the street, they occupy the moment and possibly co-opt our glandular functionality, but six seconds later, the memory and the moment are gone. To restrict or morally judge as unacceptable the very nature of male existence is not only anti-Darwinian, it is scientifically impossible.

However, we are not only creatures of instinct, but we are creatures of reason. Men must know the line they walk is always precarious, and must guard against the incursions of infidelity and the tyranny of titillation. When it comes to the babes that pass in the night, there might be no better mantra than that of the goldfish: To look is human; to forget is ichthyine.

If I had my way, the subject of an 18-month study by the RAND Corporation, women's hair would always be blown back.

Who knows what it is about follicles in flurry, do's in disarray, that makes women so irresistible. I think it's just people of all genders, from male to female and variations like Adam Lambert, like to see natural forces acting on women. But it's clear we as a society need to fully bring out women's beauty.

By redirecting American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, which aren't doing anything that can't wait, municipalities could install high-powered fans on telephone polls, street lamps and other infrastructure at face level. Of course they can't be blowing all the time, to save energy and since men look their best when their faces aren't clearly visible. This will also require pouring more money into R&D currently under way at the It's Pat Institute to visually distinguish men from women, scanning their facial features and distribution of cellulite, and using high-powered radiation blasts to identify the homogametic sex. Traffic-light and surveillance cameras already on the street can thus finally have a moral purpose.

But that's going to take a while to become operational, especially if a rider for the perverted arts is attached during floor debate. That means we must rely on human blowing for now. When you see a woman approaching, walk within a foot or so and blow into her face. This will require a massive public-service announcement campaign from the Ad Council and breath-freshener industry to protect women from bad smells, and the addition of parching chemicals to fresheners so spittle doesn't fly out. Dove sponsorship of a "Blew Beauty" campaign will get women on board, and body-spray maker Axe's entry into fresheners will ensure men take up the cause.

Little brothers of the nation, get to work.