Dear Doctor Popcult.
Why are people - usually girls, I believe - 'hot.' What is it that makes them so? It is a reversible condition or are they doomed to a life without treatment?
monkey madness
dear mr madness
the elusive 'it' factor (and here i am not talking about the upper class non-entities who are usually slapped with this label nowadays), the charismatic something that makes someone 'hot' or indeed a 'hottie' is not quite quantifiable. coupled with this, the fact that 'hot' could be said to be in the eye, or even loins of the beholder, and we have a dilemma: how to sum up something that is, in fact, subjective?
one could list attributes of some generally agreed 'hot' individuals, but would that give us satisfactory answers? i believe that it would not.
instead let us ponder this: what is the effect of a 'hot sort' or 'hottie' on the viewer? is it not that one's body temperature increases, becomes, in fact, literally hot? and so this term may in fact be a projection of the actual bodily reaction to an attractive being in one's presence.
as 'hotness' is a subjective order (and here, i would disagree with you that it seems to be an affliction, a dis-order), it can't be quantified as 'curable' or something that may 'pass'. i will not bow to the ageist society in which we live and say it passes with time. there is plenty of evidence to suggest this is not the case and we should all hope to be still found attractive as the years pass.
therefore, mr madness, i should hope that in the case of being 'hot' it is something one is BLESSED with and carries on possessing. we should celebrate the concept of 'hot', and perhaps not question it too closely, appreciate and not analyse.