This week, the international media swooned over the news that Justin Trudeau will be Canada's next prime minister. It was more than a little awkward, frankly; they behaved like a sad collection of news bodies that had not experienced the powerful effects of a long, hard election in some time.
"Meet Justin Trudeau: Canada's liberal, boxing, strip-teasing new PM," NBCNews.com wrote.
"Is Justin Trudeau the sexiest politician in the world?" The Mirror asked, taking a more investigative approach.
E! Online declared Mr. Trudeau to be a "smoking-hot syrupy fox," and, look, you're entitled to your opinion, E! Online, but when I read all those words together in one sentence, I expect a link to a recipe.
"Justin Trudeau is Canada's new, incredibly good-looking prime minister," Australia's news.com.au wrote – only slightly more soberly – breathing just under the limit, I'd say. But heavily.
"The new Canadian prime minister is implausibly good looking," Tom Gara, an editor at Buzzfeed opined, although Gawker found Mr. Trudeau's countenance entirely plausible – declaring that the "square-jawed, 43-year-old, strip-teasing, Canadian" could well be "the product of a drunken hot-tub encounter between Tom Cruise and Ken Marino."
"In Canada Justin Trudeau's Liberals elected on a platform of sorry I lost my train of thought he's just so handsome," tweeted James McHale of ABC Australia.
For heaven's sake, world, take a cold shower – headlines aren't meant to heave. Yes, I can see the advantage of being known as "Canada: the country with a hot prime minister"; it could make a nice change from "Canada, the country with a cold climate." And if, as a nation, we have done something to draw the world's attention away from Shirtless Putin, we have served.
In fact, this could be our greatest contribution to international diplomacy since the Suez Crisis; surely an achievement worthy of the Topless Trudeau International Airport. We could work this handsome-PM angle as a nation, and the world would flock to us.
Visit Canada, we could say: We have legal weed and a smoking hot head of government – why, every Question Period is like an Arctic Monkeys show.
Except the Hot PM thing is getting old fast, and he isn't even sworn in. So I've decided to take a page from my mother's people-raising book to try to put an end to this silliness.
For a while when I was a little girl, my older brother and I made a lot of underwear jokes. We were like the George Burns and Gracie Allen of undergarments, only loud, and our routines were mostly just one of us saying the word "underwear," and the other one laughing; anyone else saying the word "underwear" could easily set us off as well.
Getting us dressed in the morning took forever. Trips to the laundromat were so gleeful, it was like the dryers emitted laughing gas. Finally, my poor mother reached the end of her knicker-quip tether, and this is what she did: One Saturday morning she took all the underwear in the house: mine, my brother's, hers and my dad's Y-fronts – a cotton comedy cornerstone right there – and she put them all on my parents' bed and basically said, "You have until sundown, go nuts." And that's what we did, and then, almost miraculously, we were done with underwear.
And so I'm going to offer the world a chance to do much the same now. World, you have one week to make Hot Justin Trudeau jokes, and enjoy sexy-world-leader innuendo with impunity. Please make the most of this week and then, come Nov. 1, let's be done with this.
You want to say, "Whoa, I'd respect his arctic sovereignty," this is your moment.
Dying to shout, "Man, I'd enter that into my Hansard," when images of Justin Trudeau come on the TV screen at your local bar, you go right ahead.
Any journalists thinking of asking, "Hey, soon-to-be-prime mister, did it hurt when you fell from heaven, and do you feel that the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affected your rate of descent?" at Mr. Trudeau's next press conference, this is your time.
Want to comment, "I know he's prime minister but he's welcome to be chief of my staff" on the next news article you see speculating about the Trudeau cabinet picks, by all means, do so now.
Ditto "I'd like to be first past his post," and "I'll bet that's a right honourable member."
Have a Hot Justin Trudeau open-mike night, if you can, and try out your "If he likes to be strict on party discipline, he has my unanimous consent" bit, and see how it goes over.
If any part of you, Wolf Blitzer, wants to drop your plans to ask Mr. Trudeau about the Liberals' decision to withdraw fighter jets from Syria, and just say, "I want to put autumn leaves in your hair and wear your sweater," you should do that now.
Let me put the metaphorical underwear on the bed, world: Observers, now eager observers, some bordering on you-might-want-to-call-the-police observers, speculate that, with Mr. Trudeau heading our government, oil lobbyists may suddenly find Americans more receptive to Canadians laying pipe. And you know what they say about a man with a large majority … he has a big caucus.
Listen, world, if the words "Talk unparliamentary language to me" pop into your head, just click "Share," but by Nov. 1, I want any and all prurient interest in the question "How's he polling?" laid to rest, because, as things stand now, I predict the Liberals will bring back the long-form census, a cause dear to me, and then have to cancel it again.
We don't need the rest of the whole world filling it out. It's only for Canadians. But please, if you must participate, just check the boxes, don't write in the margins.
No one wants to know you like long walks on the beach.