guy candy

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:53 AM -0700 6/12/05, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>noticed on the cover of the February 2005 issue of Out magazine:
>   Swimsuit Special
>   22 pages of guy candy
>
>a play on "eye candy" (which we've mentioned here before), of
>course.  but how current is it?  modestly so, it turns out.
>Cosmopolitan has had a "guy candy gallery" feature for some time (so
>sue me, i tend to look at harder stuff than Cosmo guys), it turns
>out, and might even have been the source from which the expression
>spread -- to the monthly guy candy feature on www.musclemayhem.com
>and various photo albums of male models, for instance.
>

Notice the different semantic composition structure for "eye candy"
and "guy candy"; the latter may get erroneously parsed as
"[metaphorical] candy for guys" (where "candy" suggests 'tasty but
not necessarily good for you in the long run'), where "guy" is the
goal rather than the theme argument, although a candy spread
involving males and featured in Cosmo makes this a relatively
unlikely reading.

Larry