Firemen Are Hot

"Fire men are cute! Even when they're not cute... they're still cute!"

—Sex and the City

Attractive male firefighters. Why 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. Then again, some women like men who are flaming.

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.

Examples of Firemen Are Hot include:

Anime and Manga

Fire in His Fingertips is this trope in romantic Hentai form with Souma Mizuno using the strength training he uses as a firefighter as well as being quite big between the legs, to be a great lover to his girlfriend, Ryo Fujihashi.
- Souma's friends and co-workers, Jun Hase and Yuki Izumi are also this.

Film

In The Wrestler, the titular 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.
"Backdraft". Oh, God, that shower scene.
In The Nutty Professor 2, 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".

Literature

In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Sissy's first husband was a fireman. Sissy being a Good Bad Girl, lots of sex was involved.
Jason Halliday in Alison Roberts The Firefighter's Baby.
Jill Shalvis's Aftershock and Gail Barrett's Facing the Fire.
Mick Donovan of Susan Lyon's The Fire fighter.
Mitch Adams, Dean Beckman, and Brady Wade of Cathryn Fox's novella collection The Hot Line.
Logan Knight of Tory Richards's It's All In The Jeans.

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.
- Ends with this great dialogue:
  - [Scene: Out in the hall. The firemen are talking.]
  - 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 2 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.
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 pronounciations. 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".
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, 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 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, one of Sabrina's aunts had a thing for milk-drinking firemen, to the point of making one out of magical dough for a perfect date.
Janette, Nick's fellow vampire on Forever Knight, gets together with a hunky 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.
Brooke O'Brian of Jill Shalvis's Flashpoint.
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 Mad TV, Hilarity Ensues as ditzy girlfriends Lida and Molina sign up for firefighter training just for the perks.
A common theme in Sirens 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.

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...

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* "

Web Comics

This Penny Arcade strip.
Hannelore from Questionable Content had a thing for sexy firemen ... until meeting one up close, anyway.
Jack, the half-Japanese love interest-cum-Mr. Fanservice from The Green Avenger.

Web Original

Used in The Onion article "Incredibly Sexy Firefighter Tragically Dies In Steamy Blaze".

Western Animation

The Simpsons 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 "Doesn't this town have any good bachelors", at which point we see all the firefighters who are, of course, muscular eligible bachelors.
- Another example from The Simpsons was when 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. Could be considered a subversion in that Homer himself is far from most people's image of a sexy guy, but could also be considered played straight in that a) the photographer had the firefighting equipment available (implying that this is a common scenario for such photos) and b) Marge found it very alluring indeed.
  - Marge didn't find it alluring: she was more interested in the furnishings used in the shoot.

Homer: But I was going to score!
Marge: No you weren't.

Optimus Prime from Transformers Animated transforms into a fire truck. Who says he's not sexy?
- What about the fireman who was actually named 'Optimus Prime'? (After having it legally changed)
The Fairly OddParents did this in the episode "Land Before Timmy" where he wishes that technology didn't exist, turning the world into a Flintstone's parody. A volcano errupts near the end, setting fire to everything and Timmy's mom hopes that someone invents Firemen, whom she assumes would be very handsome.

Mom: "If only someone had invented a fire department to save us! I bet those so-called "firemen" would be very handsome." (cue handsome firemen appearing)
Firemen: "Fire. Fire. Fire. Rock. Rock. Rock."
Mom: "Oooh, I was right!"

Real Life

"Firefighter Hunks" calendars. Seriously. Go to Google Images and look up "New York City Firemen Calender". Burly sweaty men who ride around on a big red truck, slide down poles, and know how to handle a hose.
- 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, and the standard female firefighter Halloween costume involves a bra, miniskirt and stiletto boots.
Dawn French was once asked what uniform, if any, she would make her husband wear. She picked a fireman's helmet, and nothing else.
In real life, a lot of equipment firefighters wear or carry weigh almost a hundred pounds and they often have to carry people out of burning buildings. Needless to say this means firefighters have to train quite often to handle that, leaving them quite ripped.