Can I Be a Hot Dad?
This originally ran in How We Dad Now. You can read the other stories in the package here, as well as in our Summer 2022 issue.
Listen, dads are hot. Them's the rules. I don't make them. I'm just a rule follower. Dad hotness has been proven by evolutionary biologists and social psychologists (the science community has disregarded mom hotness as a legitimate field of study, but we'll save that for another day) and by me. Show me a man with the emotional intelligence to raise a child and I'm done.
So it's nothing new to notice that dads be hot daddin', but specificity is key, and recently, among the many hot-dad varietals, I have homed in on my type: the Soccer Dad.
Each Sunday, my niece, who is the next Megan Rapinoe, plays soccer with other girls between the ages of eight and ten who seem to think they're the next Megan Rapinoes, but they're not. Week after week, I offer to come—to cheer for my niece, but also because the sidelines are my own personal Hot Dad World Cup.
I'm not interested in the Ted Lasso wannabes: the dad carrying a backpack filled with all of his daughter's favorite snacks; the dad with a fully loaded iPad, to occupy the tagalong siblings, and enough blankets for the whole brood; the coach dad, who carries hair ties in his pocket to help with high ponytails. We get it: When men demonstrate parenting skills, we've been socially conditioned to label it "exceptionally hot dad characteristics" instead of just what people do.
No, I'm there for the Roy Kents. I'm eyeing the dads who, to most interested parties, make the soccer pitch seem like a risky hunting ground: the mean ones, the temperamental egoists with zero self-control. The dad who loves to fight the ref's every call. The dad who always shows up in a matching Adidas tracksuit—like, Bill Buford couldn't have found a more perfect soccer hooligan. The Lee Pace look-alike who rolls up each week on a motorcycle wearing the same helmet-and-Ray-Bans combo as his daughter and uses his position as assistant coach to make sure she never leaves the field. (I swear he's trying to kill me.) And the short king with the British accent who can't seem to stop himself from howling about his daughter's footwork. Every time he leans over and mutters some shit talk about the other players' lack of skill, I get a glimpse of his ring finger: still nothing on it. Jackpot.
It's mildly disturbing how effectively these impulsive men light up both my uterus and my loins. It's the raw passion, out there for all to see. The dominance. The testosterone-filled exhibition of MAN in the context of something so low-stakes and, frankly, adorable. That's what gets me: these hotheaded Soccer Dads
displaying the feral parts of the alpha male that most appeal to my base attraction, minus all the more problematic attributes of alpha-maleness.
Suddenly I am the biggest fútbol fan. Olé, olé, olé for the Soccer Dad. Or, should I say, Soccer Zaddy?
Allison P. Davis, a culture writer for The Cut, is the author of the upcoming book Horny.
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