Man, are you sexy enough for us?

Chow Yun Fatt, Aniki Jin, Tony Leung and Aaron Kwok are Asia's hottest sex symbols. Closer to home, ex-celeb James Lye and current hottie Tay Ping Hui come closest to fitting the bill. What makes them, and for that matter, all sexy men, send our hormones into overdrive?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Tanny Chia

[eastciti.com, December 15]
If sexiness in a woman is elusive, in men it is all the more so. Perhaps it's because His Royal Sexiness title had only been bestowed on the less fair gender only recently, and popular culture is still forming its conclusions.

Look at recent history. While decidedly sexy women the likes of Marilyn and Bo Derek had fuelled the wet dreams of our grandfathers, our chaste grandmothers would be damned to describe Clark Gable (Gone With The Wind) as sexy. At most, he was suave, a complete gentleman.

Then came the renaissance, a new batch of sex symbols who - horrors! - are male. Harrison Ford and Sean Connery were far from gallantry personified, yet they sent our mothers (and some of us now) into scandalous feeding frenzy. More recently, Ricky "bonbon" Martin sent us howling like thirsty hounds for hot Latin blood and spawned a whole string of sexy-wannabes.

Yet, for all the newfound ease with male sexiness, we're still hard pressed to put a sure finger on it. Unlike women, bared skin and big chest alone do not a male sex symbol make. If ongoing Purplelips readers' poll on what makes a man sexy is anything to go by, it were the intangible qualities like "confidence and assuredness" and "sparkling intelligence and wit" that the majority of readers, 27.7% and 32.8% respectively, voted for. "Smouldering eyes and sultry lips" came in a distant third with only 17.6% votes.

What is it then, that turns normally well-behaved women into shirt-clawing cats in heat?
>> Find out from our panel of 11 hot-blooded women: