Dear Molly,

My aspiration is to become a universal sex symbol. How can I attain my goal?

—Hottie in Hollis

Dear Hottie,
People throw around many made- up statistics at Harvard: one out of every four freshmen come into college as pre-med, 75 percent of Harvard kids marry other Harvard kids, with 80 percent of those marriages stemming from the five-year reunion. Although these are plausible, one I would not believe is that many Harvard students dream about being a universal sex symbol. Universal sex symbol and Harvard diploma? To paraphrase Hugh Grant in “Love Actually”—Um, would we call that an oxymoron?

I am not saying your dream is inconceivable, just that it is ambitious. Natalie Portman did go here, and many consider her (both with and without hair) universally hot. We Harvardians cannot forever claim Natalie as our campus-wide justification that attractive people actually do go to Harvard. We need a new sex-symbol poster child and hey, it might as well be you.

But how does one go about such a quest for world sex-symbol domination? Harvard’s very own Mark Zuckerberg may have provided you with one avenue: the Facebook. This fall, there was a girl in Florida who posted many pictures of her minimally clad self that somehow led to an invitation to appear in Playboy. The probability that this will happen to you is probably right up there with the probability that you will avoid contracting some odd disease after jumping off the Weeks Footbridge into the Charles. Not good.

One sure-fire plan is to star in an epic period piece film. Look at what it did for Leonardo DiCaprio (“Titanic”), Russell Crowe (“Gladiator”), and Keira Knightley (“Pirates of the Caribbean”). Once you move to L.A., get discovered, learn to talk in a cute accent, and get screen time in period clothes that showcase your best assets, you’ll be set. If you can succeed in accomplishing all of this, the likelihood that you’ll attain your sex-symbol status is akin to a senior hooking up with a seventeen year-old pre-frosh next weekend: very high. Just like your role model, Austin Powers, women will want to sleep with you and men will want to be you. Or vice versa.

Other possible roads to sex-symboldom include, but are not limited to: win a Nobel Prize and get known as hottest genius ever; get drafted by a professional sports team and have your agent get you on many magazine covers; enter the porn industry and well, you know. Basically, in order to be universally regarded as a sex symbol, you need to be famous. So that needs to be mission one.

Next comes confidence (not to be confused with cockiness) and the true belief that this goal is attainable. Take a page out of R. Kelly’s life: Not the one involving underage girls (which would be an inappropriate turn for this column to take considering the topic), but rather one where he passionately and convincingly sings that he believes he can fly, he believes he can touch the sky. I believe you, R. Kelly. I believe you can fly. And if he can fly, there is no way that a kid from Harvard Yard cannot win the ultimate fight: to be the next universally recognized sex-symbol.

Good luck and hook me up with your hot friends when you make it big,

Molly

—Dear Molly runs on Mondays. Please send questions to DearMolly@thecrimson.com. Questions will be published anonymously.