All I Want for Christmas is for Men to Be Sexy for Once

This year’s Netflix Christmas rom-coms offer up a litany of hot, kind leading men who cater to the feminine gaze.

Dear Fan,

Thank you for being here.

If you, like me, are a person who is primarily attracted to men, you’ve probably noticed that, as a whole, they’re a pretty unsexy bunch (#notallmen, don’t @ me). Luckily for us, the Netflix Christmas rom-coms this year are offering up a litany of hot, kind leading men who cater to the feminine gaze.

Men being unsexy isn’t a secret, it’s all over the culture. Straight women have had to do some expert contortions to convince themselves that men are sexy. We’ve recently seen the rise of the “rodent boyfriend” trend, which is the idea that a man who is a little bit rat-faced is the pinnacle of hotness. People go around using the term “ugly hot” to describe men that are so hideous they somehow cross over into handsome. Men, especially straight men, are universally known for being smelly, hairy, and bad at doing things. It’s not just that they’re not physically attractive, their unsexiness pervades their very personalities (again, I’m generalizing here).

It’s typical for women to talk about the men they love as if they don’t like them. We’ve all heard the complaints about men being terrible at communication, not being able to plan dates, being selfish in and out of the bedroom, and having no interests outside of crypto investing and maybe playing a video game. Hell, one of the most popular songs of 2024 was Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please,” where she is literally begging the guy she’s with not to embarrass her. I know so many people who love and relate to that song, which is delightfully tongue-in-cheek and catchy, but it’s also hitting on something real, namely that the girls, gays, and theys who date men are tired of them being embarrassing and shameful. We just want men to be sexy, for once.

This year’s Netflix Christmas movies really delivered on that front. We got a batch of movies that focus on men being sexy, and even being objectified in a manner that’s typically reserved for the ladies. Here’s the thing, objectification is not inherently bad. It can actually be a very important part of attraction. Objectification becomes bad when you only view a person as an object, as has often happened with women, historically. But the Netflix Christmas movies this year present us with (mostly) well-rounded, likable men who we get to enjoy as whole people while also admiring their abs, arms, and outfits.

Now, if you’re reading this I can pretty confidently assume you already understand what’s appealing about the Christmas rom-com genre, but just in case you’re new to this, here’s a little primer: Christmas romantic comedies are not good, in the traditional sense of the word. They are extremely formulaic, often poorly acted, always pushing a very traditional, family-forward, usually heteronormative ideal of romance. But they are FUN. The terrible premises, idyllic small towns, and fantasies of quitting a stressful big-city job to settle down with a nice hometown handyman offers some type of comfort and joy, which is, after all, what this season is all about.

I would argue that the Netflix Christmas movie golden age (which is different from the Hallmark Christmas movie golden age, but I can’t get into that now unless you want this to be a book) took place from about 2017 to 2019, when they released absolute fucking bangers such as The Princess Switch, A Christmas Prince, and The Knight Before Christmas. Since then, there’s been a bit of dearth, with most of the Christmas rom-coms of the last few years being terrible sequels or threequels to previous movies (I love Vanessa Hudgens and I love trash but even I couldn’t handle a THIRD Princess Switch movie). I think this year marks a return to the golden age of so-bad-they’re-good Netflix Christmas movies, and the way Netflix has managed to refresh this tired genre is by presenting us with leading men who are–can you believe it?–actually appealing to women.

A typical Christmas rom-com revolves around an attractive leading lady who has a personality and a passion and a different beautiful winter coat for every day of the week. She always falls in love with a man, and he’s usually a boring blank slate of a character with a handsome face and good morals who doesn’t hold her back (much). Not bad, but not a lot going on. However, in 2024’s The Merry Gentlemen, Hot Frosty, Meet Me Next Christmas, and Our Little Secret, the men are actually intriguing for once.

***spoilers ahead***

The Merry Gentlemen is the movie on this list that leans most into objectifying men. It’s basically a low-budget, holly-jolly Magic Mike. This movie is all about a small-town group of men who just happen to have washboard abs (despite being bartenders and taxi drivers) who come together to form a hunky dance company for the good of the community. Chad Michael Murray plays the romantic lead, and his character, Luke (yes, that was also his name in One Tree Hill) doesn’t have much going on outside of his abs, but, honestly, that’s enough for me. This movie is less about plot or character development and more about ripped men doing sexy dances, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Hot Frosty is a mix of The Merry Gentlemen’s pure sexual objectification and the soft, sensitive characterization of men we see in the other two movies on this list. This movie is exactly what it sounds like: someone makes a snowman with abs, he magically comes to life, and he’s hot (he’s Dustin Milligan). He does a lot of chores for people with his shirt off, the whole town is horny for him, and our main character falls in love with him. But, he’s more than just hot, he’s a really supportive partner. He teaches our leading lady, Kathy (Mean Girls alum Lacey Chabert), how to repair her own furnace by giving her a book on home repairs with the inscription “I figured out who your second true love should be…it’s you.” Sure, this is a movie about a man who’s sexy because he’s chiseled (literally, they chiseled him out of snow), but he’s also sexy because he helps his partner learn to love herself and take charge of her own life.

Meet Me Next Christmas is about a woman, Layla (Christina Milian), who meets a handsome man in an airport on Christmas Eve, hits it off with him, and makes a pact to meet him at a Pentatonix concert next Christmas if she happens to be single by then. It’s basically a low-budget, holly-jolly Before Sunrise. Long story short, she ends up falling in love with the guy who is helping her find the guy she thinks she’s going to fall in love with. This character, Teddy (Devale Ellis) is introduced as a nice little guy with no obvious sex appeal (except that he looks like Devale Ellis, but they try to cover that up à la She’s All That at first). We start to see him as a potential romantic partner for Layla in a pivotal scene where he dons a tight little T-shirt and shows off his ripped arms by presenting his guests with a platter of food he made himself, which includes both meat and vegan options. This is the pinnacle of sexiness created for the feminine gaze: a man with a hot body who can not only cook but is thoughtful enough to cook multiple dishes to accommodate his party guests’ dietary restrictions. And nobody even had to give him instructions. Teddy becomes irresistible to Layla later on when the two of them enter a dance contest and perform together onstage, and his final grand romantic gesture is delivered while wearing a red velour suit with the shirt unbuttoned to show a lot of chest. Teddy is very much the sweet boy-next-door type with a slutty side. He’s got an actual personality, he’s kind, and he’s sexy. Gone is the blank-slate-boy from Christmas movies of yore.

Our Little Secret is my personal favourite of the Netflix Christmas rom-coms this year, and it is notable because, while the romantic lead isn’t as overtly sexually objectified as the others in this list, he really epitomizes what I mean when I talk about catering to the feminine gaze. First of all, they cast Ian Harding as the main man, Logan. Harding is best known for his portrayal of Ezra Fitz in Pretty Little Liars, and while Ezra is a character that did not age well (I’ll be talking about PLL in the future, don’t you worry), I think most millennials who grew up watching that series will just remember him as a sensitive dreamboat. Harding is a well-documented friend to Shay Mitchell, and therefore friend to all women. His Instagram is littered with tasteful thirst traps that are always accompanied by a funny caption. He regularly raises money for Lupus in support of his mom. Ian Harding is, absolutely, a woman’s man. He already embodies a soft, sexy, sensitive masculinity in his real life, which comes through in his character in Our Little Secret, and I suspect is a big part of why he was cast in the first place.

While Logan may not be parading around with his shirt off like the other Christmas-movie men this year, his outfits are all very carefully chosen and flattering, so he does look great the whole time. And, here’s the real kicker: he’s not petty or mean. The premise of this movie is that Avery (Lindsay Lohan) and Logan are exes from ten years ago, and this year they are both spending Christmas visiting their new partners’ families. But, uh oh, their new partners happen to be brother and sister, so Avery and Logan are staying in the same house for the holidays! You can guess how things go from there, right? They spend the holidays being meaner and meaner to each other, acting like they hate each other, until they finally get into a screaming argument that culminates in them kissing passionately, right? That’s what I expected, because that’s always how this type of movie goes, but actually what happened was oddly refreshing.

Instead of being a jerk because Avery broke his heart in the past, Logan is just nice to her without expecting anything in return. He helps her make her new boyfriend’s mom like her. He tells her he’s not sure about her new boyfriend, not because he’s being competitive, but because “something doesn’t feel right” about the new boyfriend’s behaviour (that’s because the new boyfriend is busy having his own Christmas rom-com with an old hometown flame from his past). He’s there for Avery when she’s confronted with the grief of losing her mother. Logan is just a stand-up guy throughout the whole movie, and through being honest, kind, and having a good personality, he ends up with the girl of his dreams. The only time we see him being selfish and shitty to Avery is at the very beginning, where we see why they broke up a decade ago. So, Logan is an example of someone who learns from his past mistakes and becomes a better (and much hotter!) man. Plus, he’s giving soft leather daddy in his suede barn coat. This is more wholesome than any other Christmas movie I have ever seen.

So, to any men reading this, I’m making the gentle suggestion to take a tip from this year’s Christmas movies and consider adding “be sexier” to your list of resolutions for 2025. I don’t mean you have to get a six-pack or grow seven inches, but try taking some actions that are a little bit outside of your comfort zone and might make you more appealing to the feminine gaze. It’ll be fun, I swear. Try wearing a bright colour or a pattern other than plaid! Crop one of your T-shirts and wear it in public! Make a list of things you appreciate about a woman you know that have nothing to do with what she can do for you! Leave your button-up shirt a bit less buttoned up than usual! Post a thirst trap! Embrace whimsy! Shower one more time per week! Allow yourself to be vulnerable! Call out your bros when they say obviously racist things! Learn a new hobby! Develop a unique fashion sense based on what you like and what flatters your body, not on what’s in the latest issue of GQ! Paint your nails! Wash your sheets! Start an all-men’s dance troupe and save your favourite local establishment from bankruptcy by stripping for money, you cowards!

Merry slutmas, boys.

Rose