Australia's Hottest Tradie

Until I moved to Sydney I had never heard the term “tradie.” Australians affectionately use it to refer to guys in trade/blue collar professions, such as carpenters, electricians, and plumbers. Apparently these men are a hot commodity when it comes to boyfriend material, as women in Sydney overwhelmingly prefer them to their white-collar counterparts. In fact, 94% of local, single women surveyed said that they were extremely interested in dating a tradie. These women are tired of high maintenance investment bankers and lawyers (etc), and instead want to love of a down-to-earth man’s man. Tradies are considered more loyal, more traditional, and more family oriented, not to mention they can fix things around the house and look smokin’ without a shirt. I think this phenomenon could partly be attributed to the whole “tall poppy” notion, as Australians pride themselves on turning their nose up at elitism. While in the States I think there is more separation between blue and white-collar, here everybody looks at each other the same when work is over and the pubs are bumping. Anyway, this craze has gotten so extreme that Australia’s RSVP.com (a networking site for finding love) has a section devoted just to finding single tradies to date. The website recently went the extra mile and ran a competition to find Australia’s Hottest Tradie, and the results are apparently in. I would call the whole thing pretty exploitative, but those dudes look really into the photo shoots! Anyway, in this economic climate these are the guys with the stable jobs, so they have more of a reason to smile than most bankers...