Searching for Fabio

I’ve spent the week searching for Fabio, not the love-god of our imaginations, but Fabio Lanzoni the world-renowned, Mills and Boon, face of I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-butter. He’s the new face of Old Spice and I had the hard-hitting journalistic task of looking at all of his sculpted body-shots for ‘research.’ Tough gig.

In my quest, I came across a quirky webmaster, the founder of his website who had spent her working life, serving Fabio, she even wrote a book on Amazon titled; ‘Adventures in stalking Fabio.’ I laughed at first that even at 69, this woman was still fascinated with Fabio’s fine form, it even inspired her to write erotic romance novels (what menopause?!), then the greater message emerged, everyone’s looking for love or at least, lust, somewhere.

I think I found my great love on Ready Steady Cook this week. Patrizzio Buanne was a guest on the show, proclaiming the three words that every girl wants to hear, “I am single,” he said. Thank God! He can cook, sing and sweet talk and with looks like that, even mum would be impressed. He doesn’t know it yet, but we’re getting married. Patrizio if you’re reading this, I’m single too. We should really give this a go.

It seems good looks and gourmet chefs were the new formula for romance this week. Perhaps the way to a woman’s heart was through her stomach also, or maybe it was just in giving her a seat at the dining table rather than having her stand around and slave away in a kitchen. We loved to be fussed over.

Take for instance, the new dating show on channel 7, ‘Dinner Date.’ On what is a regular date night for many, those desperate, dateless or just desperate for drama, tuned in on Tuesday night to watch Simone Cunico’s quest for love as three eligible bachelors vied for her heart, through conversation and their culinary skills. She perused a selection of menus and agreed to date these men based on the food they had promised to prepare for her, no photos of the men were provided. She went with an open mind and open heart that naturally let the tall, dark, handsome fella in (even if he was a bit arrogant, he was macho and that was an alluring additional dessert to the menu).  She was happily being romanced and is still dating Mark; the man she chose to take on a second date on the new romantic dating series. It was lights, camera, and plenty of action for this attractive duo.

Most viewers criticised Mark on Twitter for his egotism (I’m stupidly a sucker for it). Some tweeps said that this proved that women always go for the jerks, but all boys have their moments so it was worth looking at his other finer traits.  His redeeming qualities were those that feature in most women’s checklists:

1. A winning smile
2. Kind eyes
3. He was family oriented
4. Great physique
5. Passion

Described like that, he sounds a bit like Fabio and that’s my point – we’re all looking to be rescued by the alpha-male. We’ve lost our voices protesting for women’s rights (somewhere between the office and motherhood), our feet are sore from the power-heels that elevate our self-esteem but rarely our pay and at the end of the day, we just want a gentleman to sit us down, treat us like a princess and who is built to save us from the day we’ve had.

Lucky for me, I found Patrizio. At last! I can call off the search.  Good luck in yours…. I have no idea where you’ll find him.