For the past couple of days I’ve been spending my time away from this keyboard enjoying the first season of 30 Rock, Tina Fey’s deservedly heralded comedy about the behind the scenes adventures of a live NBC sketch comedy. There is much to admire about the show, from its deft writing to the comedy-assassin timing of co-star Alec Baldwin (he kills with each line he delivers), but what I found myself focusing on was the strange appeal of its creator and star—a woman who has taken on the mantle of sex symbol seemingly despite her insistence on downplaying and mocking her own appeal at every available opportunity. I say seemingly, because it occurred to me that rather than making her less attractive, her ambivalence towards her own allure is the precise reason why she has become a sex symbol of sorts and that in so doing she joins an elite group of female TV stars whose inherent lack of glamour has earned them just as many fans and admirers as their more overtly sensual peers.
I call these woman:
TV’s Top Eleven Most Attainable Sex Symbols
11
As Daisy Steiner, one half of the greatest slacker duo in television history, Jessica Hynes (then credited by her maiden name Stevenson) portrayed a woman who was extremely familiar to the 20-somethings who strongly identified with the lifestyle portrayed in this iconoclastic UK sitcom. Rather than a typical Hollywood sexed-up fantasy figure whose presence amongst a group of video-game playing, comic book reading, Star Wars re-enacting geeks would have seemed implausible at best, she was exactly the kind of woman who would count folks like that as her friends—largely because she was as much of a social misfit as they were.
Reason She Seems Attainable:
A prototypical slacker, her lack of drive, disdain for following a conventional career path and largely unfulfilled ambition to be a writer held a mirror up to 90% of the folks who watched Spaced with an eye of intimate familiarity rather than amused distance.
Reason She Is a Sex Symbol:
While not conventionally beautiful by the standards of Hollywood, she was the kind of woman who grows more attractive the more you get to know her, until finally you realize she’s actually a knockout.
Did You Know:
She got her start on TV appearing in British comedian’s Harry Enfield’s sketch series, in which she was featured in a sketch that was embedded on this very blog for quite some time awhile back?
10
While Veronica Mars herself was the epitome of the unattainable girl—gorgeous, self-assured, exceptionally clever and in possession of an obvious hard-on for troubled boys—her go-to hacker gal pal Mac was a cute, smart girl whose natural insecurities made her even more adorable than she already was. Not that you could blame her for being insecure—having for years felt like an outsider in her own home, she eventually discovered with Veronica’s help that she had been switched at birth with her school’s resident vacuous blond mean girl and that their parents agreed to keep the babies they had been given once the hospital’s mistake had been revealed over a year later. The wordless moment of recognition between her and her birth mother is perhaps my favourite moment in one of my favourite TV series of all time.
Reason She Seems Attainable:
As smart and cute as she was, she had zero confidence when it came to dealing with the opposite sex—a problem that was compounded when (SPOILER) her first real boyfriend revealed himself to be a mass murderer and a rapist.
Reason She Is a Sex Symbol:
Not only was Mac really cute and blessed with a sharp wit, but she could put together a fake website in less than two hours with nothing but a broken Commodore 64 and a 24 BPS modem. If that ain’t sexy, what is?
Did You Know:
She played the annoying girl in Kevin Costner’s not-quite-the-fiasco-everyone-thinks-it-was Waterworld?
9
There are many reasons to enjoy the Discovery Channel’s hit series Mythbusters, but most honest heterosexual men will admit that its chief appeal lies in the saucy redhead who serves as the show’s third member of its “B Team”.
Reason She Seems Attainable:
She’s really good with tools and likes to see stuff explode as much as any dude.
Reason She Is a Sex Symbol:
She’s a smoking hot redhead who is constantly surrounded by explosions.
Did You Know:
Has there ever been a more adorable scowl on TV? Okay, maybe Emily Deschanel's comes close, but I gotta give the edge to comedienne Rajskub, who in Chloe has given us the world’s cutest anti-social-to-the-point-of-possibly-being-borderline-autistic hacker/sidekick. Despite not appearing in the show’s first season, Rajskub’s portrayal of Chloe is so counter-intuitively appealing she has become almost as important to the success of the series as Jack Bauer/Keifer Sutherland himself.
Reason She Seems Attainable:
Truthfully, she’s kinda fucked up.
Reason She Is a Sex Symbol:
Well, there’s that adorable scowl for one thing, plus if you dated her you would never have to worry about ever being lost and still avoid paying expensive GPS system subscription costs. “Honey? I can’t find the Krantz’s new house. Could you hack into a secret DOD satellite and tell me if I have to turn left or right?”
Did You Know:
Isn’t it wonderful that the greatest mechanic in the ‘verse, also happens to be the sweetest and the cutest?
Reason She Seems Attainable:
She goes through life constantly covered in various greases, oils and lubricants, but not…y’know…in a good way.
Reason She Is a Sex Symbol:
She cleans up real shiny. Plus she is a determined optimist who always believes in the good of her fellow people, even though doing so is contrary to her experience. And, to be blunt, she’s a bit of a hornbag.
Did You Know:
She played a much less endearing character in the equally wonderful (and short-lived) Fox series Wonderfalls?
6
When Dawn chose to stay with her loutish fiancé rather than accept the love of her co-worker and best friend Tim, she broke all of our hearts. Thankfully she won them back when she returned to Slough from Florida and wised the fuck up. Matching the show’s bleak aesthetic, Davis eschewed any touches of glamour and still managed to convince us all that Tim was—at that moment—the luckiest man in the world.
Reason She Seems Attainable:
She was a receptionist at a paper company in Slough and she remained faithful to an utter cockhole.
Reason She Is a Sex Symbol:
She always enjoyed a good prank and made for the perfect soul mate.
Did You Know:
Dawn’s American doppleganger, Pam is a spot higher than her on the list if only because the number of episodes she’s appeared in has made it possible for us to get to know her that much better. Plus she didn’t have to leave the freakin’ country to realize she’d made a mistake rejecting Jim’s romantic overture. And has there ever been a more moving smile than the one she beams once the complications are finally sorted out and Jim asks if she wants to have dinner with him? I really don’t think so.
Reason She Seems Attainable:
Mostly the way she dresses and pulls back her hair.
Reason She Is a Sex Symbol:
Universally recognized as the hottest girl in Dunder-Mifflin’s Scranton office, Pam, besides being a talented artist, would really get us if she met us.
Did You Know:
Fischer is an accomplished writer/director? Her vicious satire of Hollywood altruism, Lollilove, is one of the funniest and most accurate mockumentaries ever made.
4
To be frank, Liz Lemon is a total mess. A really hot mess. One hopes Ms. Fey took a lot of liberties when she created her and decided to cast herself in the role.
Reason She Seems Attainable:
A personal slob with the tastes and instincts of the theater geek she’s always been, Liz also knows even more about Star Wars than you do—if that’s even possible.
Reason She Is a Sex Symbol:
With or without the glasses, the woman is fine. Plus for all of her deficiencies as a human being, she’s damn good at her very cool job.
Did You Know:
Fey named Paris Hilton the worst guest host to ever appear on SNL during her stint as head writer? She even went so far—on Howard Stern’s radio show—to describe the heiress as a “piece of shit.” Now doesn’t that make you love her that much more?
3
I’m as shocked as you are that everyone’s favourite Wiccan lesbian didn’t take the top spot on this list, but when you see who beat her out for the number one and two positions, you’ll understand just how tough the competition she faced really was. And actually her fourth season conversion to the other team did factor against her overall tally—since not liking boys does have a negative effect on her attainability. Even so, if any one person perfectly defined the term geekbait, it was this Jewish hacker witch.
Reason She Seems Attainable:
Once dressed really badly and was shy to an almost pathological degree. Harbored a not-so-secret crush on her best friend Xander, who represented all of us geekboys watching at home.
Reason She Is a Sex Symbol:
Having gotten over her shyness, she became a total hottie. Plus the lesbian thing is a pretty big turn-on and we know how good she looks in leather.
Did You Know:
That when she was younger she babysat for the kids of her future How I Met Your Mother co-star Bob Saget?
2
There is something a bit problematic about the two women who take up the top two spots in this list, in so far that their attainability comes largely not from their own deficiencies but rather from their close proximity to women whose sex appeal is overt to the point of almost-parody. It seems likely that were they not around these other women, they would seem as distant and unapproachable as any other sex symbol, if only for their extraordinary beauty alone. But then again, one could argue that Bailey’s lack of confidence and terrible shyness did a lot to soften the power of Smither’s honey-blonde hair and heart-warming smile. Perhaps even if she didn’t live in the hyper-confident shadow of the station’s voluptuous sexpot receptionist, Jennifer Marlowe, she would still seem like someone who would turn you down gently, rather than with a caustic and wittily devastating one-liner.
Reason She Seems Attainable:
She genuinely doesn’t seem to know how awesome she is.
Reason She Is a Sex Symbol:
Shyness has never been more intoxicating.
Did You Know:
That in 1966 she appeared on the cover of Newsweek as the face (and behind) of the American teenager?
1
Like Bailey one is tempted to suggest that Mary Ann's seeming attainability was simply the result of her spending all of her time with a woman who delivered all of her lines as though she was on the cusp of a possible orgasm. If anything, one could successfully argue that Mary Ann was actually more beautiful than her famous roommate, Ginger Grant, but doing so would miss the point that Mary Ann’s chief appeal wasn’t her supernaturally wholesome beauty, but rather the fact that she was so goddamn sweet and wanted nothing more from life than to make as many coconut cream pies as she could before the castaways finally got themselves rescued.
Reason She Seems Attainable:
When one is blessed with the presence of a shining angel, one does not run away--one seeks it out.
Reason She Is a Sex Symbol:
Aum…Have you looked at her?
Did You Know:
Last year Ms. Wells portrayed the part of Mrs. “Lovey” Howell in a stage production called Gilligan’s Island: The Musical (and that based on the photo that appears in this link, she’s still the hottest woman on this list)?