WHY CAN'T YOU BE MORE LIKE JASON HOPPY? Women across America ask their men, rhetorically

Jason thinks pregnant bellies are hot, too. (James Devaney/Getty)
Jason thinks pregnant bellies are hot, too. (James Devaney/Getty)


Last night on Bravo's "Bethenny Getting Married", Jason Hoppy talked his pregnant wife out of a panic attack, told her she looked sexy multiple times, laughed off her inexperience changing a diaper, frolicked on the beach shirtless without making a big thing about his six pack, teared up at the joyful prospect of becoming a dad and waxed his wife's goody trail. Oh and he cleaned up iguana s***.
A year ago Bethenny Frankel, the star of the show, didn't have a boyfriend. Now she's married to a man who women everywhere want to cuddle. And men everywhere want to punch.
Jason Hoppy is the perfect guy. Or at least he seems that way on television. When he first entered the scene as Bethenny's new man on this season of the "Real Housewives of New York", I was skeptical. Who is this guy who so willingly stands in front of a green screen feeding a dog for reality show interstitials? At that point they'd only been together a few months, and his willingness to play a major role in the show, coupled with his slick Hedge Fund style and the fact that they met at Meatpacking district club, made me doubt his intentions. Then I thought, maybe he's just not my type.
I was wrong on both points. Every Thursday I get googley over Hoppy: the way he talks to the dog, the way he coos "baby" that's both paternal and romantic, the soft but sturdy sound of his voice. I realize I'm leaving myself open to ridicule, drooling over a reality show star like I was 8 and he was Fred Savage. But I'm confident other women feel this way too.
One by one, my friends have surfaced asking if I've seen the show and what I think of Jason. And then when we agree that he's wonderful, the conversation turns to men that we've dated or are currently dating. And how they really should be more sensitive, masculine, humorous, involved, physically agile, supportive or just generally more JASON-LIKE.
I realize this isn't fair. Jason is, in some ways, a fictional character in the same way Bethenny is. I mean two people who look like them and have their names exist. But as a viewer, they appear as an amalgam: part New York thirty-something stereotype, part self-projection. When she worried last season on "Housewives" that at 39, with her booming career, she wouldn't also fall in love and have a kid, female viewers sympathized. When she "got it all", we were relieved. If only to prove that it could be done.
Honestly, my expectations were low. Maybe she'd meet someone that she could "put up" with. But when Jason turned out to be a genuinely nice person (as far as I can tell) and a soothing complement to Bethenny's fast-talking success-driven persona, it offered more than just good TV. It offered a ray of hope for single women. It also probably offered a conversation entitled "how things have to change" directed at boyfriends across America. Sorry. It's just that if Jason can be so Jason, then why can't everyone else be that way?

Let me close, your honor, with a direct quote from Jason on last night's episode. "Bethenny, you're not going to have to do everything on your own anymore. I'm going to be here for this baby and you and protect and support you. I love you." We love you too Jason. (Watch out there's a guy winding up just behind you.)