Have you heard about the himbo?

Take a Magic Mike: See Channing Tatum’s himbo squad in theaters soon.

MANILA, Philippines - The formula is simple enough: good looks, plus a seemingly pea-sized brain equals a himbo. A recent viewing of Bridesmaids made John Hamm my easiest target. Good-looking fellow, but fell short on the EQ — and the IQ. He got me thinking: have I met a himbo in real life? So I scoured my short-term memory and found that even the regular doses of local swagger don’t really add up to the formula. Which was how I ended up in a conversation with a friend over Johnny Bravo.

We both had a problem trying to pin down a real-life counterpart, because we kept making concessions for could-be himbos. “But he’s kind of funny! In a dumb way.” Or they were just playing dumb — which made me wonder if the himbo was exclusive to a western perspective.

Himbos are, simply put, the male versions of bimbos. You know: those pretty to look at, nice to hold — but not too challenging intellectually. As alpha female roles increased, so did the number of flat-charactered himbos. Lately, they’ve been all over the place. From John Hamm (a Himbo Hall of Famer at this point), Taylor Kitsch, to Magic Mike’s Channing Tatum (the godfather of himbos), suddenly himbos are taking up a significant space in our collective cultural cache.

But it isn’t like the himbo was ever an alien concept to begin with. Our radars have, at one point, encountered a semblance of the inversely proportionate beauty-to-intelligence ratio — but why the sudden cultural, bicep-busting burst? Well. It’s because they’re just so, so manly. And that’s tough to refuse.

Take Channing Tatum, for example. You’d think that after Dear John we’ve had enough of the sad-sack acting, but no. He had GI Joe, he had GQ covers. And then, it happened — the devolution was tweeted. A portion of my feed wanted to see stripper Channing Tatum with his Chip and Dale squad on Magic Mike — in 3-D. It’s because Channing Tatum has major himbo mileage — macho, and holding out the promise of saving a day without so much as breaking a cognitive sweat. We girls love that because we have D.I.D. (Damsels in D-stress) in our DNA. D for “douchebag.” We can’t help it.

It’s Not About The IQ, But The Eye Candy

But we may also have reached a metrosexual saturation point. Himbo prominence and appreciation could just be a result of female desire for a less evolved kind of man. Enough with the guys/dudes/bros who get touchy with their hair and secretly criticize the shoes we choose to wear. These himbos take care of themselves via their neighborhood gym and will not shy away from a sando. Don’t get me wrong, we’re grateful for the style and hygiene consciousness that the metrosexual movement has spawned. But himbos just exhale bravado, and there’s something undeniably masculine about them. They might be hollow, shallow and onscreen, purely ornamental — but they’re a piece of furniture taking up serious visual real estate. And we eat it up, calculating possible mortgages and bargaining the asking price. Douchey, but with a side of abs?

Let me make something clear though: just because we ogle Mr. Buffy it doesn’t mean we want to be with them — it’s classic mental trophying. You know: the idea of bagging a himbo makes you think of a pretty-good-looking, yet-to-exist kid. Bagging a himbo is basically for bragging rights. It’s an accessible fantasy, but in the end, we’ll always know the difference. I get it when someone downplays their intelligence to weed out those with excess baggage, but playing dumb for the sake of being a dummy when you’re not is just, well, dumb. There are a number of ways to measure intelligence, but for stupidity, there’s just one.