The colour of sex

It is not the first time and it won't be the last. Slotted inside Cosmopolitan magazine's latest offering of better sex is a readers' poll of the 100 sexiest men on the planet. The results are barely worth holding on to your chair for. Predictably, readers voted Robbie Williams into the prime spot, with David Beckham, George Clooney and Jude Law all in the top 10. But the poll did excel as a typical example of its genre. As is so often the case, these votes of desire are cast almost entirely in monochrome. According to the poll, the really sexy men are all white.

Nowhere in the top 10, 20 or 30 have Cosmo readers shown that their sexual tastes are, well, cosmopolitan. Actor Will Smith is the highest black entry, at 31, followed by Tiger Woods at 60, Rio Ferdinand at 71, Dwight Yorke at 77. Denzel Washington, Cuba Gooding Jnr and Tyson Beckford all fall into the last 15.

Why should this be so? One explanation is that there are fewer black and Asian men in the public eye than white men. Another is that the magazine has a predominantly white readership. But why should it be inevitable that white women desire white men, particularly when women are supposed to be exploring their desires like never before?

Sexual attraction has always been understood as a free choice, as if it exists in the vacuum of our personal taste. So much so that its colloquial, "fancy", also infers choice. But who we fancy and why is constrained and informed by race - our own and that of the object of our desire.

A woman who is deemed sexually attractive on account of her race finds her own desire informed by this. Rosie Lee, 26, says her Chinese descent has led to "bad experiences" with both black and white men because of "the China doll syndrome". "They imagined me to be submissive, loyal," she says. "I don't conform to that." Conversely, blond, blue-eyed men have never caught her eye. "I suppose subconsciously I go for dark men. I presume they won't see me as a sexual trophy."

If a woman's race removes her from the realms of what is considered desirable, then her own sexual radar responds accordingly. Usher Sahu, now 23, says her Asian looks were dismissed as unattractive in her white school. "Blonde was fanciable. The only boys who did fancy me were black. Sexual desire became about the unexplored. That was what I found interesting. Wanting to be with non-white men emotionally, physically and sexually is an exploration of my own identity."

Sahu says she sought non-white partners as a result of racism. "I could see there were men who, like me, did not conform to the sexual model and I found that shared experience attractive."

Being able to express sexual desire is significant for women, still struggling to feel at ease with our bodies. And because women are still mythologised as the bearers of race, desire for another race is seen as a rejection of that role. So desire becomes less a means of self-affirmation than an opportunity for rebellion.

For Liz Forbes, 30, her sexual awakening as a white woman was precisely that. "The idea of a white bloke was not alluring. I thought of him as unassertive, unforthcoming, polite." In her teens, she says: "Different accents and colours seemed more experimental."

Certainly black masculinity is still potent in the white imagination. As fantasised, it is the embodiment of man as rebel. Assumptions about black people's particular access to the pleasures of the body informs how they are desired. And these assumptions lead to the notion that sex with that body is a means to freedom, an end to boundaries. As an adult, Forbes is uncomfortable with the way her desire was racialised. "Now it's a certain attitude that turns me on. And nice hands. I don't want to make massive judgments."

Fair enough. But "judgments" are like stubborn stains when it comes to sexual attraction. "The way race, sex and sexual desire are intertwined is often referred to superficially," says Lola Young, Professor of Cultural Studies at Middlesex University and project director for the National Museum and Archives of Black History and Culture. "White women like black men. Black men like Asian women. The implication is that if we peel off these layers, there is a 'pure' form of desire, untainted by what goes on in a wider societal context. But in spite of many shifts, our ideas and ideals about what constitutes physical attractiveness are still relatively narrow: the idea of a square jaw or a thin nose are bound by race."

So when you next read "research" that says we decide we fancy someone in the first seven seconds of meeting them, treat it with the contempt it deserves. More likely it was decided at birth. Love may be blind but lust is most definitely not.