My new obsession.

For years my aunt has waxed enthusiastic about her “books on tape” from the library, but it wasn’t until I happened to notice a CD version of The Lord of the Rings trilogy at my own public library this spring that I too got sucked into the sisterhood. It took about ten minutes. Seduced by Rob Inglis’s masterful narration, I became an instant audiobook-ophile. I devoured all three Tolkien books in quick succession, rushing to my car on my lunch breaks and sitting too long in the driveway at home, loath to turn off the stereo before Legolas and Aragorn or Frodo and his devoted Sam extricated themselves from whatever fresh predicament had befallen them. I haven’t listened to NPR in months!

I’ve just finished listening to a fantastic book called The Golden Ocean, a swashbuckling fictional account of Commodore Anson’s historic circumnavigation of the globe back in the early 1740s – complete with scurvy, shipwrecks and pieces of eight – told from the point of view of a young Irishman (and narrated brilliantly by a John Franklyn-Robbins). Avast, ahoy, ye swabbies! I ejected the last disc with the greatest reluctance and immediately went in search of more nautical books by Patrick O’Brian. Fortunately there are a lot.

I love when reading, or in this case listening to a book ignites a hunger for new knowledge. After reading Delta Wedding this summer, I ransacked Wikipedia and Google for everything I could find about Eudora Welty. Same thing with Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters, an entrancing comedy of manners from a direct (literary) descendant of Jane Austen. As soon as I finished the book I had to watch the BBC miniseries, because I just wasn’t ready to let go. Movies will do it, too. After I saw Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth, I brought home a pile of books about the Elizabethan era.

And a whole new obsession was launched earlier this year when Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent, a book about perfume (previously a topic of only passing interest), led me to The Emperor of Scent, about fragrance master Luca Turin and his revolutionary theory of smell, and then in turn to Turin’s own vastly entertaining Perfumes: The Guide, and then inexorably to the perfume counters of Nordstrom and Sephora, where I proceeded to spend lots of money.

Hot gal of the day?

So, Out magazine's website has this “Hot Guy of the Day” feature and I was getting all bent out of shape about this brazen gender parity deficiency – I mean, would it be so hard to have a “Hot Gal of the Day”? Does Out think that there just aren’t enough hot women out there and they'd have to post different shots of Angelina Jolie (everyone’s favorite bisexual knife-wielder) every other day, after they’d run through the cast of The L Word? Everyone knows how phallocentric the national gay mags have always been, but I thought things had maybe changed in the fifteen years since the Lesbian Avengers were protesting this sort of thing. Was I wrong!

Then I click on the “Hot Guy of the Day” link and damn, if I thought my knickers were already in a twist – mercy! This bare-chested rippling hunk slits his eyes at me with his prominent package and trimmed pubes barely contained by skimpy skivvies – NSFW alert! (“Not Suitable for Work,” not "Not Suitable for Women” – though an argument could be made). And someone’s heading straight for my desk, and I’m hitting my “Back” button frantically, because I don’t want anyone at work to know I’m a perv.

All these thoughts cascading through my mind, and I’m wondering if I really want Out to flaunt a “Hot Babe of the Day” after all, because feminists shouldn't objectify other women, plus the kind of thing lesbians find hot is quantifiably different from what men – gay or straight – like to leer at. Right? Contrary to everything the Dinah Shore would have us believe. I mean, the Dinah Snore. (Did you see those naked women with painfully fake tits, teetering around the pool covered in Bud Lite body paint? I’m not opposed to body paint per se [see: Burning Man], but when the tits are emblazoned with a cheesy corporate logo, it just doesn’t say artistic or sexual freedom to me. And since when do lesbians like obviously fake tennis ball tits?)

I guess maybe the lesbian version of “Hot Babe of the Day” might look just like any other Page Six hottie (and lord knows the media-saturated world we live in is a veritable explosion of Hot Babes of the Day). It didn’t used to be like this. Didn’t dykes used to like shaved heads and unshaved armpits, pixie haircuts and no makeup? Lesbians have upheld a different standard of beauty than straight men – than Cosmo and the CW and beer commercials have foisted on our collective impressionable consciousness. Often the women declared by men to be “hot” have left lesbians decidedly cold.

But is it a brave new world? Did feminism and its insistence on women’s worth not being contingent on our looks careen headlong through sex-positive empowerment and arrive right back at brazen self-objectification?

Now, of course, having taken a firm grip on myself, I have scouted over to AfterEllen.com, dykedom’s answer to all things Out, and – lo and behold! AfterEllen’s “Hot 100,” in all their glory. L Word cast (Jennifer Beals, Leisha Hailey, Kate Moennig – check, check, check). And the delectable, I mean talented Mary-Louise Parker, my girlfriend Cate Blanchett, Gillian Anderson (be still my heart), Blake Lively and, clocking in at #11 (down from #2 last year), Angelina Jolie.*

Okay, so there’s some overlap. And a lot of hair and lipstick. I guess the straight world and lesbians are in agreement about some things. There are, unsurprisingly, icons and role models like Ellen (avowed) and Jodie (not so avowed). But there are some cuties on AfterEllen's list who would never appear on Maxim’s Hot 100 –













and, mercifully, the reverse is also true.

*Notably missing is the so-smart-it-hurts Rachel Maddow, who will unquestionably appear on next year’s list. If Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson are still together, they will too.