We’re too sexy for our city

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/05/2021 (1917 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I can tell by the pained expressions on your faces that you are in desperate need of a little bit of good news this morning.

Well, guess what, Winnipeg? I have just what the doctor ordered in the sense I am poised to share some surprising news that should get your juices flowing.

There’s no point beating around the proverbial bush, so I’m just going to blurt it out — you live in the fifth-sexiest city in Canada!

Yes, Winnipeg, prepare to become extremely excited, because among Canada’s major cities, you rank No. 5 on the sexiness scale for 2020.

For the record, this is not just my opinion. No, this is the opinion of the crackerjack researchers at Ontario-based PinkCherry, “Canada’s largest online retailer of adult novelty products for sexual health and wellness.”

For the past nine years, this online firm has produced a spicy list of the sexiest big Canadian cities based on per capita sales of its risqué merchandise. On your behalf, I examined some of these products online and, to my untrained eye, they tend to resemble fancy TV remote-control devices.

The point is, according to their list of the Top 20 sexy Canadian cities with populations over 300,000, Winnipeg is No. 5 when it comes to online adult toy sales, putting us just behind Calgary (No. 1), Surrey, B.C. (No. 2), Edmonton (No. 3) and Ottawa (No. 4).

“The results were very interesting and tell quite a bit about the people who reside there. For example, people in Calgary were focused on couples’ gifts for playtime together, but people in Winnipeg seemed more interested in self-pleasure,” is what PinkCherry gushed in a news release that I do not wish to delve into any further.

For the record, I have no idea why Calgary would be No. 1, other than to assume it has something to do with the fact they can likely hide a lot of adult novelty products under those gigantic cowboy hats they all wear.

But the local news gets even more, um, arousing in the sense that our sexiness score has skyrocketed since the pandemic began, because on the previous year’s sales list, Winnipeg ranked a lowly No. 18, which (for those of you who remember Grade 3 math) means we have just jumped 13 spots on the annual sexiness scale.

On behalf of all of us increasingly sexy Winnipeggers, allow me to issue the following statement: “Woo-hoo!”

As if that weren’t enough to put a smile on your seriously sexy faces, consider the fact that we are now officially hotter than the smug cities of Vancouver (No. 16, way down from No. 1 in 2019) and Toronto (No. 11, down from No. 8).

After thinking about these numbers for several minutes, I realized they mean Winnipeg is now one of the sexiest Canadian cities during what has arguably been the least-sexy year in human history.

According to a national survey by researchers at the University of British Columbia, the naked truth is Canadians are having less sex, not more, amid the pandemic. That’s likely because of higher stress levels, not to mention too much time together for couples and too much time alone for singles.

Being a proud Winnipegger, however, I also want to stress that people in this humble Prairie city do not expend a great deal of their mental bandwidth worrying about how sexy other people think we are.

No, we focus on the things that really matter, such as: Worrying about what’s wrong with the Jets; worrying about how big our mosquitoes will be this summer; and worrying about whether we can convince our teenagers to shovel our driveways when winter rolls back into town.

It’s safe to say unassuming Winnipeggers will not be parading down Portage Avenue to celebrate the fact that they are now No. 5 on the national sexiness scale. We come from hardy pioneering stock and we are not the type of immodest people to throw our obvious sexiness in anyone else’s face.

Consider the following sexy conversation between two Winnipeggers that I just made up:

Guy No. 1: Hey, that’s a nice parka!

Guy No. 2: Thanks, eh.

Guy No. 1: You’re welcome, eh.

Now contrast that subtle Prairie sex appeal with the over-the-top assault on your senses on display in this fictitious but extremely realistic encounter between two typical Torontonians:

Guy No. 1: How about those Leafs?

Guy No. 2: OH YEAH, I AM SOOOOO SEXY!

Guy No. 1: OK?!

What I think I’m trying to say today is that it’s OK for us to take a reasonable amount of pride in the fact we have finally cracked the Top 5 among Canada’s sexiest cities, even though we don’t need anyone else to validate the obvious fact we are one smokin’ hot metropolis.

So just sit back and enjoy the positive vibrations, Winnipeg. We couldn’t care less what people in other cities think about our smooth, understated style. Especially those poor folks in Laval, Que., because they’re dead last at No. 20.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca