The television wants to push sex in our faces, but for some reason our brains can get in the way. I don't know why certain images of the opposite sex make my guts squeam and my breath hiccup. The women who sport bikinis on beach shows, or get topless on the occasional Masterpiece Theater-ah, Alex Kingston, how can I remember you any other way?-have an obvious appeal, and although nobody has figured out why guys like to watch women kiss, the networks have thrown plenty of them into prime time, too.

But sometimes the television hits unexpected buttons. Take this spring, on the WB's Angel, when Amy Acker died and turned into a demon goddess. In addition to her new skin-tight leather get-up and eerie contact lenses, Acker had turned blue: she had a blue-splotched forehead and bright streaks in her hair. And it was kinda sexy.

Around that time, I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and there was Kate Winslet, sporting Manic Panicked blue hair as a symbol of brain-damaged intrigue in all of her best scenes. Later, I caught a commercial on TV for hair dye that showcased a model with shimmering, bioluminescent blue coloring. Then came the coup de grace: Keira Knightley, the most beautiful woman ever bred to mount a horse, dressing up as a Pictish warrior in King Arthur by painting herself a flawless chalky cobalt.

I'm not some creep. I didn't go out and buy a bright blue blow-up doll or stash a blue wig under the pillow "just in case." I don't gawk at these images. It's more a kind of fixed stare that lasts a few seconds too long. If this were a fetish, it would be easier to understand. Searching the Internet, I found a blue hair fetish site, but it was pretty crass: the images either came from Japanese anime, where blue-haired schoolgirls are a dime a dozen, or goth, where you can find page after page of gigantic women in witches' capes. ("Blue hairs" also refers to elderly ladies, but I didn't want to look at those sites.)

If most of the blue hair belongs to witches and mutant schoolgirls, maybe this is a sci-fi or fantasy thing-directed at the crowd that can't get a real girl, so they might as well go for one who's unreal. Or, if it's finally breaking into the mainstream, it could be a trend-but I scoured In Style and Entertainment Weekly, and I couldn't find anything about it.

But you can also see it as an aberration. These three characters look unusual because that's how we're meant to respond to them: they're separated by a bold stroke from other women on the screen. Looking at them makes you reconsider your assumptions. Like driving a car that uses only three wheels, it makes you rethink the whole concept. And no other color looks as compelling. Unlike a swampy or elvin green or an obvious fiery red, the blue streaks of color make the women look erratic and even hostile, but also soothingly pure-staring at them is like sinking into turbulent waters, both refreshing and bone-crushing.

I thought I knew about the opposite sex, at least enough to stop wondering about it. The blue women have proven me wrong.

I still haven't figured out the attraction. But I'll fess up that lately, with Angel off the air and no new blue women on the networks, I've started to get over it. And anyway, I just noticed that an albino woman works down the hall from me. I've gotta know, what's her story?