Firemen Are Hot

With a big man comes a big hose.

"Firemen are cute! Even when they're not cute… they're still cute!"

— Sex and the City

Attractive male firefighters. Why, of all men, firefighters? Perhaps it's their occupational necessity to keep in prime physical condition, coupled with their tendency to heroically rescue people from burning buildings. Either way, this trope is prime Mr. Fanservice, and one that is prone to heavy Lampshade Hanging, such as male strippers dressing as firefighters, or women in comedies rescued by firemen who happen to all be strapping studs.

For some reason, the potential implications of a bunch of beefy men spending lots of time together in a building with lots of beds and few women around never seems to enter into this trope. Or maybe it does.

Cousin to the Fair Cop, Good-Looking Privates, and Hot Men at Work.

Note: This is NOT about people who have fire-based powers. That is Playing with Fire.

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Examples

Advertisement

• Spoofed in this German ad for Axe where a fireman rescues a girl and they seem to embark on a Rescue Romance until an astronaut shows up.

Anime and Manga

• In Fire Force, all the companies in the Special Fire Force submit photos for the annual nude calendar. All the submissions are of male fire fighters, and Captain Ōbi hopes that Company 8 can win first place with their photo.

Comics

• In Circles, a calendar called "Men of Fire" with pictures of muscular anthropomorphic dogs in slutty poses appears occasionally.
• The Simpsons: The Springfield Fire Department consists only of attractive men. Unfortunately, they're also completely useless at fighting fires. But they apparently can shift calendars like nobody's business.
• Viz: the following conversation appeared in a Sid the Sexist strip:
  Baz: What is it with women and firemen's uniforms? It's like fancying a bird just because she's wearing a nurse's uniform.
  Joe: What's wrong with nurse's uniforms, Baz?
  Baz: Well, nothing, but she'd have to be a cracker in the first place. The uniform's just the icing on the cake. Whereas you could put the Elephant Man in a fireman's uniform and he'd be fighting them off with a shitty stick.
  • All of which prompts Sid to join the Fire Brigade and prove Baz wrong with predictably disastrous consequences.

Fan Works

• In the Emergency! fic "January Surprise'', Joanne Desoto finds a calendar at the beauty parlor with a younger,buffer Chet Kelly-and Mike Stoker gets it to use as revenge on "the phantom"

Films — Live-Action

• In The Wrestler, the title character has a drug-and-booze-fueled one-night stand with a random girl in a bar that mentioned having a thing for firemen. When he wakes up, he's in a room full of firefighter posters and other firefighter related paraphernalia. Even the sheets on the bed he wakes up in have firemen stamped on them. When he gets up, he realizes that he is dressed is a firefighter costume.
• In Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, Denise's bachelorette party is interrupted by a "fireman" who declares an emergency in the house and turns off the music... only to put in his own tape and start stripping to "The Thong Song".
• Magic Mike has the guys wearing firemen costumes in one striptease scene.

Literature

• Hilariously subverted in the Curious George parody Bi-Curious George, in which George dials the fire station's number in hopes that he can bring over a bunch of attractive firemen over to the house. Alas, the firemen who come banging down the door are all old and potbellied.
  George feared that his wall calendars had been lying to him all these years.

Live-Action TV

• Friends:
  • Monica, Rachel and Phoebe burn mementos of their former boyfriends because they have nothing else to do for Valentine's day and set part of the apartment on fire. Cue hot firemen. The firemen in that episode talk about how single women set fires accidentally-on-purpose, apparently because of this trope. The girls all make dates with the firemen and agree their bad luck streaks are over. Cut to the firemen out in the hall revealing they're apparently taking full advantage of this trope.
    Fireman 1: You guys tell them you were married?
    Fireman 2: No way!
    Fireman 3: Are you kidding? My girlfriend doesn't know, I'm not gonna tell them!
  • One time, Phoebe dated two guys at the same time (a studly fireman and a sensitive teacher). She decides to break with the fireman but turns out he's also sensitive, and artistic to boot. He ends up dumping her after he learns she took the teacher on a candlelit picnic in the park because he can't be with someone who's so reckless about a major fire hazard.
  • When Phoebe's apartment catches fire she pauses to smile flirtatiously at one of the firemen as she runs in to check the damage. Joey, who's clearly aware of this trope, asks another fireman if he can borrow the guy's uniform for a date. Monica scolds him but then whispers to Chandler that he'd look good in a fireman's outfit.
• Subverted in Sex and the City. After attending a firefighter-themed stripper auction, Samantha goes to meet one of the sexy firemen at his work. Instead of finding a harem of buff men, she walks in to a lounge full of old guys with beer bellies watching TV. This is distasteful enough for the shallow, hypersexual Samantha; but it gets worse. While she's seducing the sexy fireman, the fire alarm goes off, leaving her standing partially naked while the entire fire brigade pushes around her to get into their trucks.
• Swedish comedy show Nile City contained a "sub show" about a group of firemen whose station was in the same building as the radio show that the main characters produced. These fireman all lounged around with their shirts off and either had English names or their Swedish names were given English pronunciations. There was always a narrator talking about emotions and male bonding and similar themes, and each episode was titled "Grown Men Do Things Together". To round it all up, during every episode the song "Up Where We Belong" was played, always beginning on the line "There were mountains in our way".
• Psych: Shawn Spencer seems to have a thing for firemen… which started with his uncle coming for career day.
• In the Modern Family episode "Up All Night" Phil has pains caused by a kidney stone and his wife Claire and daughters are excited because they get to call in the "sexy firemen" much to Phil's chagrin. Phil gets even more irritated when he notices his wife Claire putting on makeup and changing into nicer clothes before they arrive. Later in the episode, Claire's brother Mitchell and boyfriend Cameron are excited to call the firemen when Mitchell injures his ankle. Cameron takes a picture with his phone of a fireman carrying Mitchell out in his arms.
• According to the ladies of Ashes to Ashes (2008), firemen are totally hot:
  Shaz: Would you slide down his pole, ma'am?
  Alex: Like a shot.
• One "The Girls Room" sketch on The Amanda Show featured a stripteasing fireman.
• Rescue Me toys with this trope a lot. Granted, they also deal with the hardships of being married and/or related to someone whose life is constantly on the line. They also had a hot female firefighter for a while, not to mention some hot gay firemen having the hots for each other.
• One of these appeared in an episode The Thin Blue Line. Maggie had the hots for a hunky firefighter who unfortunately turned out to have the hots for her male colleague Kevin. Hilarity Ensues.
• Firefighter Jimmy Doherty, of Third Watch, receives a lot of female attention. He even posed for an advert for a Viagra-type product.
• In an episode of The Bill, the coppers encounter a female Fire Investigation Officer, who has big breasts and is wearing a low cut white T-shirt under her firefighter outfit. Eddie tries to hit on her, but finds out she has a boyfriend.
• In Sabrina the Teenage Witch:
  • The episode "Dream Date" has Zelda building a dream date out of Man Dough. Her choice is a fireman who loves drinking milk.
  • It's a Running Gag that Hilda has a thing for firemen - and she occasionally gets Salem to 'trap' himself in a tree so a fireman can rescue him (and thus allow Hilda to set up a date).
• Janette, Nick's fellow vampire on Forever Knight, falls in love with a handsome firefighter. When she says, "He knocked down my door, swept me off my feet and carried me off," she is not speaking figuratively. She is, however, neglecting to mention that her apartment was on fire at the time.
• Resident hunk Trey from Noah's Arc posed as one of these for a calendar shoot.
• One episode of Two and a Half Men has Charlie and Alan bring home two drunk women. After the women head for the beach, Alan lights candles and sets the house on fire. After the girls have left, the episode cuts to Charlie and his therapist, with him complaining. When the female therapist questions it, he responds:
  Charlie: Have you seen LA firefighters?
• In the Castle episode "The Third Man", Beckett's date (to counter Castle's own date with New York's most eligible bachelorette number three) is a firefighter who made that year's FDNY calendar. For July.
  Beckett: They always put the really hot guys in the summer months.
• On MADtv (1995), Hilarity Ensues as ditzy girlfriends Lida and Molina sign up for firefighter training just for the perks of Eating the Eye Candy.
• An episode of Modern Family has Claire dressing up and putting on lipstick in anticipation of the firefighter who is coming to transport her injured husband Phil to the hospital. Later the same episode Mitchell lightly bangs his ankle on something and he and partner Cam are thrilled to call 911. Mitchell even pretends he is so injured he has to be carried.
• A common theme in Sirens (UK) which Stuart really dislikes. He's constantly trying to beat the firemen to the accident scene so they don't steal the glory. He managed it once getting to "save" an "obese" pregnant drunk woman; who while being carried down several flights of stairs moans about how she wanted the firemen. Once they do get downstairs they're showing off their hoses to the women. Finally policewoman Maxine has fallen for a fireman.
• Referenced in What I Like About You after Val finds out her New Old Flame husband is a firefighter and Lauren becomes obsessed with trying to get one for herself.
• Played with and subverted in Emergency! with paramedic Johnny Gage, a Casanova Wannabe who continually struck out with the ladies despite being a young, good-looking single fireman. In one episode he's even asked to be in a calendar shoot with sexy models, but at the end of the episode the photographer decides to go with his comparatively dull, married partner Roy DeSoto instead.
• In the Australian series Fire, 'Grevious' Fazio strips for a hen's party at the fire station and gets in trouble for it. At the end of the episode, he decides to take up part-time stripping.
• Happy Endings sees Max pursuing fire fighters more than once. In one episode, Jane, who feels the same way-despite being Happily Married-calls in a false alarm and greeting the firemen. In order to look hot for them, the two strip down to their underwear instead of the hideous outfits they had challenged each other to wear.
• That '70s Show: One episode had Jackie being excited to go on a double date with Donna and two firemen. This changes when Jackie learns one of the firemen had a bad date with her mother.

Music

• The song "Here Kitty" by Sparks points out the danger in this trope: sure, rescuing cats from trees gets firemen laid, but some cats are too big to handle.
  A four-alarmer and the circus is ablaze
  Panicky people run out madly through the haze
  I fight my way into the Big Top, wipe my eyes
  There stands a tiger trainer, lovely, hear her cry!
  She points up to the high-wire, there a tiger stands
  "Oh help me, help me, bring my tiger down, dear man"
  "If you will save him, I will be yours every night!"
  I climb the pole and look the tiger in the eye…
• While none of the Village People ever dressed like a firefighter, that didn't stop them from releasing "Fireman", a song that reveled in this trope.
  So come on, now honey, lets jump into the fire
  And there be no stopping
  'Cause I'm your fireman
  Honey there's no stopping
  You better grab some while you can
• While not strictly about firefighters, the British sea shanty "Lifeboat Man" centers a woman who picks a husband from among a lifeboat's crew by jumping off a pier and flirting with all the men who help rescue her.

Newspaper Comics

• In Luann, Brad gets into shape and looks more attractive once he starts training to be a firefighter. His classmate and Love Interest Toni Daytona is a female example. The two of them are among the local firefighters photographed for a Fanservice-filled calendar.

Video Games

• Referenced in Animal Crossing. One of the letters you can receive from the player character's mother talks about her being rescued by a hunky firemen after an aerobics accident (Apparently, You Do Not Want To Know.) She ends on the line, "Firemen are cute! *heart* "
• THE iDOLM@STER: SideM has Ryu Kimura, or at least, he used to be one before he became an idol, as he wasn't quite cut out for the job. He's more cute than sexy, but like all of the idols has quite a few fanservicey cards, some of them playing up his former career.
• Referenced indirectly in Mass Effect 2. The Inferno Armor, which is designed to look like a man-shaped firetruck, is the only pre-built armor that gives you a charisma bonus.
• Firefighters in The Sims 3: Ambitions can use this to their advantage when flirting with other Sims.

Webcomics

• Questionable Content: Hannelore had a thing for sexy firemen... until meeting one up close, anyway.
• In Alice, Alice's friend Joanne has an explicit fireman fetish.

Web Original

• Parodied by The Onion: "Incredibly Sexy Firefighter Tragically Dies In Steamy Blaze".
• The very first episode of The Frollo Show says it all: "Frollo Faps to a Firefighters' Calendar." It's even weaponized because his cum can put out actual fires.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons:
  • "The Two Mrs. Nahasapeemapetilons" uses this while subverting the Bachelor Auction trope. The auction is to raise money for a new fire engine, but all the town's bachelors are deeply unappealing. Lisa comments "Aren't there any good bachelors in this town?", at which point we see the firefighters who are, of course, all muscular hunks.
    Fireman: Ah, we're never going to get that fire engine.
  • In "They Saved Lisa's Brain", Homer won a free boudoir photoshoot. One of his photos had him pose as a mostly-nude firefighter with the hose wound around his body. The parody comes that Homer himself is far from most people's image of a sexy guy and Marge, upon being shown the photos, was more interested in the furnishings used in the shoot.
    Homer: But I was going to score!
    Marge: No you weren't.
• The Fairly Oddparents did this in the episode "Land Before Timmy" where he wishes that technology didn't exist, turning the world into a Flintstones parody. A volcano erupts near the end, setting fire to everything.
  Mom: If only someone had invented a fire department to save us! I bet those so-called "firemen" would be very handsome.
  Firemen: Fire. Fire. Fire. Rock. Rock. Rock.
  Mom: Oooh, I was right!
• Played with in Archer when Cheryl fantasizes about being rescued and then strangled to death by a sweaty fireman.
• A downplayed example in Milo Murphy's Law; Melissa's dad, Richard, is a firefighter and has a noticeably muscular build and strong jawline. However, it's not commented on by anyone.
• We Bare Bears parodies this in the episode "Fire", where the firefighters are attractive men who are always shirtless.

Real Life

• "Firefighter Hunks" calendars. Seriously. Go to Google Images and look up "New York City Firemen Calendar". Burly sweaty men who ride around on a big red truck, slide down poles, and know how to handle a hose.
  • NYFD calendar man Michael Biserta raised a few...eyebrows when his scene in a Guys Gone Wild video surfaced. That thing wrapped around his wrist? Not a wristwatch.
  • Or their colleagues from Bilbao (Spain).
  • Brazil has Heróis do Rio (Heroes of Rio) and Anjos do Brazil (which was even accused of leading to the end of a marriage, as some said financer Eike Batista's wife Luma de Oliveira cheated on him with one of the firemen - Eike, Luma and the guy◊).
• It also appears to be a popular costume for both sexes—but due to the typical costuming Double Standard, the standard male firefighter Halloween costume covers the entire body, with maybe a shirt that can be opened, while the female equivalent involves a bra, miniskirt and stiletto boots (although the male costumes have come up with more creative ways to incorporate the hose.)
• Dawn French was once asked what uniform, if any, she would make her husband wear. She picked a fireman's helmet, and nothing else.
• According the 2015 "Sexiest Man Alive" issue of People magazine survey, firemen ranked the highest in what women thought was the sexiest job for men, with 50% of all the votes.
• During the after party of Saturday Night Live's first episode following the events of 9/11, Rachel Dratch spent the whole night flirting with one of the firefighters who was in attendance. It turned out the firefighter was actually gay and this is what inspired the "Girl with No Gaydar" sketch.

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