He's so fine

What we find attractive is so subjective that I prefer not to give too many physical descriptions when I introduce my characters unless it's relevant to the story.

If you ask a woman who she thinks is hot you might hear George Clooney or Brad Pitt, Josh Harnett or Ryan Reynolds.  How about Rob Lowe or Viggo Mortensen?   You like an accent?  How about Jude Law or Colin Farrell?  My point is that all of these men are incredibly handsome but they're not exactly interchangeable.  We all have an ideal or at the very least, a reference point that we conjure up automatically.  It's what I bank on.

It's enough that my readers know that my hero is eye candy for my heroine.  She's going to love his eyes, his mouth, that mysterious smile of his.  His body is going to strike her as absolutely perfect - for her.  We don't need to know his height.  Does Johnny Depp lose his appeal standing beside Vince Vaughn?  Not likely.  Naturally the hero is strong but does it really matter if he's built like David Beckham or Orlando Bloom?  Probably not.  We don't even have to know his coloring.  Less is more.

Too perfect would be intolerable.  No woman wants to fall for a man dragging every other woman's eyes around behind him.  Unsettling wouldn't even begin to describe that kind of relationship.  If we were looking for physical perfection in our romantic heroes we wouldn't have accepted Tom Hanks as a romantic lead over and over again not to mention Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally.   The hero can be smoldering, charming, funny, or serious but he has to be genuine and capable of an emotional investment that can curl our toes when we see it.

By backing off on my physical descriptions I invite the reader to fill in the blanks and imagine the hero the way she wants to visualize him not the way I pictured him.  By doing this the reader becomes part of the creative process as she makes that unconscious investment in him.  Now I'm truly sharing a story.