Gorgeous guys, made to order

I discovered something the other day. Looking at handsome men can get old. Who knew?  How did I come to this insane conclusion?  Funny you should ask.  I signed up for a Hero Face-Off.  A bunch of authors will be pitting their heroes against each other and the winner will be chosen by the number of Likes he receives in each round. We all have to write a descriptive piece about our studs, highlighting their amazing qualities. Hopefully it will be enough to blow the competition out of the water.

Sounds great!  Even sounds fun and original.  The more difficult task is finding the perfect physical stand-in for our literary hero.  Someone who embodies this masculine marvel.  That's not so easy.  You would not believe how many descriptors you can add in your search and yet still have an incredible amount of photos to sift through.

I started with handsome men.  Quite frankly, the numbers coming up for that alarmed me. So I added sexy handsome portraits.  Still an insane number.  Okay, let's go dark hair, blue eyes, ages 30 to 40.  Aaaah!  Are you kidding me?  Seriously?  Still over 1000?  Insert sharp expletive here.

I opened up another tab and did the same refined search in another photo source and nearly wept.  Going back and forth between them, I cruised the eye candy, nixing men for their haircuts, sideburns, ambiguous sexual orientation, and stupid poses (Double thumbs up? You've gotta be kidding. Don't . . . don't do that.).  Even clothing proved to be an obstacle. So many men were shown in suits and ties.  My hero might not even own a tie.  Ugh.

I'm ashamed to reflect on how much time I devoted to this man candy quest. I'm still not even sure if I should go with the pictures I chose (Two of them.).  I could very well be back to the old grind, a painful grimace fixed to my face as the perfect smiles begin to blur and run together before my eyes.

A woman's work is never done.