The End of the Hot Streak

Rolling Stone’s 20th annual “Hot List” edition arrived in my mailbox this week, confirming what I’ve been suspecting for years:  hot is dead.

Now, I don’t say this simply because the issue’s cover girl -- Stacy Ferguson, a.k.a. Fergie, of the Black Eyed Peas, who last summer earned special notoriety for peeing her pants in public -- confesses inside that she lied about being bulimic to cover up for her crystal meth habit.  Because, you know, that’s hot.

I say it, rather, because hot’s heyday has passed, and I can no longer allow it to ride its reputation any longer.  Simply, it’s time somebody finally exposed hot for what it really is.

Hot, as a concept, has always had significant flaws, not the least of which is a lack of clear meaning.  Which is to say, when I tell you something’s “hot,” what exactly am I saying?

If you believe that the aforementioned Fergie is “hot” (and between the pants-peeing, the meth, the faux bulimia, and her face, I personally don’t, but that’s a different conversation entirely), then you find her sexy, or attractive, or beautiful, or arousing, or some combination thereof.

In fact, you could then say that she makes you “hot,” and possibly also “bothered,” a notion of hot which would have nothing at all to do with her appearance, and everything to do with an increase of blood flow to your loins, which may or may not manifest itself in moisture, swelling, and/or actual measurable heat.

This heat, of course, is similar in temperature but entirely different in meaning from, say, a meatloaf which might be “hot.”  If a meatloaf is hot, in all likelihood, it is fresh from the oven, liable to scald your fingers or even tongue.  It is not likely to be attractive, or sexy, or beautiful.

However, that very same meatloaf could be “hot” in another sense altogether:  it could be heavily spiced.  Perhaps the meatloaf recipe included chili peppers, which you could say were “red hot.”  This sort of hot can’t be cooled down with a few ice cubes.  It’s a totally different form of hot.

And yet it’s also totally different from the hot that might be used to describe a stock whose price is rising quickly, or a batter on a hitting streak.  In both cases, the object in question could be called “hot,” yet neither is physically warm, heavily spiced, or particularly good-looking.  They are simply going like gangbusters for the moment.  They are the thing du jour.

Thus, with all these variant meanings, “hot” is ripe for confusion.  For example, let’s say I were to say to you, “That salsa is hot.”

Perhaps I mean to say that that particular brand of salsa has been selling extraordinarily well of late, that it’s been flying off the supermarket shelves, the most popular thing in salsa today, and I want you to know just how “hip” and “with it” I am.  Alternately, I could mean that the salsa in question is excessively spiced, and thus you may wish to have a cold Corona on hand, or even a baguette, before partaking in its peppery goodness.  It’s also possible that I mean instead that I’ve just removed that jar of salsa from the microwave, and I’m warning you because, kind soul that I am, I don’t want you to burn yourself on it.

Or, maybe I just have a condiment fetish.

And yet, damning as all this confusion may be, ambiguity is not hot’s fatal flaw.  Rather, hot’s problem is, by definition, intrinsic:  what gets hot must cool down.

Indeed, everything “hot” we’ve discussed thus far -- the hitter on a “hot” streak, the piping “hot” meatloaf fresh from the oven, the “hot” pants-pee-er from the Black Eyed Peas -- will eventually grow cold.  The hitter will slump; the meatloaf, left to its own devices, will chill to room temperature; and the pop singer will wrinkle, or go gray, or resort to plastic surgery, or at the absolute least, god willing, stop appearing on the covers of national magazines in her underpants.

Only the salsa will not cool down.  But eventually, it will mellow.

And yet, if uncertainty and inevitable dissipation were hot’s only failings, I would not have called you here today to mark its passing.

For all its Eighties glory -- or perhaps because of it -- hot has grown fat and happy.  Its overuse has diluted its meaning, and in many cases, distorted it.  To wit, even if you can get past the lack of bladder control and the pierced eyebrow, and you believe Fergie to be hot, you are unlikely to approach her in public or consider her as a potential mate.  Why?  Because hot, more than ever before, is inaccessible.

Hot, in the “hot chick” or “hot guy” sense, is lust, not love.  It is desire, but not affection.  In identifying someone as hot, we are implicitly identifying too that they are not, in any sort of real-world sense, for us.  Anymore, hot is no longer an attraction, but an abstraction.

This disconnect has made hot vulnerable and weak, susceptible to takeover.

And so, while hot has been busy preening and foolishly fawning over itself, it has quietly, yet unquestionably, been usurped.

Cute is the new hot.

While hot struggles to remain relevant, cute is everywhere.  Cute boys, frustrating though they may be, are nevertheless the priority for pubescent girls, because cute boys are a possibility.  Hot guys?  A fantasy.

And for all their macho posturing about wanting hot, most men and boys will confess in a private moment that in a partner, they prefer cute.  Hot burns out, or fades.  Cute matures, and gets better with age.

A perfect example of the cute corollary may be the rise and fall of Lindsay Lohan.  A few years back, when she was cute, she was everybody’s darling -- charming, delightful, downright adorable.  Once she decided to become hot, the paparazzi vultures swooped in, the drug rumors swirled, and suddenly she was just another front-page eating disorder with questionable breasts.  She can never go back to cute.

Meanwhile, Katie Couric rode cute through 15 years on the Today show, into the hearts of the American people, and now, onto the CBS Evening News, cute still going strong.

But perhaps the most compelling evidence of cute’s hot streak is its expanded reach.  Once, cute was reserved for babies and puppies, but now anything can be cute:  shoes, boys, apartments, iPod accessories, Mini Coopers, that outfit Sally wore to the party the other night . . . the options are endless.  And yet, as all-inclusive as cute has become, it carries with it none of the confusing baggage -- or inevitable decline -- of hot.

Not only that, but cute sells.  The aisles of Target, surely as much a cultural weather vane as anything we have in this nation, are lined with cute, from handbags, hats and halter tops to potato peelers, shower curtains, and pencil cases. Good luck finding a “hot” potato peeler.

That said, I still think Hot Pockets have a bright future.  ‘Cause, you know, they’re kinda cute.