Let me state right off the bat that I don’t like sexy vampire stories. But it does make sense, in a way.
So what is a vampire? A creature that hunts humans. A predator.
Now, predators manage to catch their prey with various gimmicks. A cheetah runs after gazelles. A tiger uses its stripes to blend in with the shadows. A spider spins a web and hopes something will fly into it.
There are also animals that actively lure their prey to its doom. Angler fish use a wriggly tentacle on the top of their heads that looks like a worm to smaller, hungry fish. Snapping turtles do the same thing with their tongues. Some snakes do this with their tails (the worm diet is pretty popular).
So if you have a hunter of humans, such a creature might use lures as well. What would entice people? Beauty, sexiness, a compelling personality, or just being cool- notable characteristics of the most of the vampires that infest urban fantasy nowadays.
Of course, most authors haven’t thought it out that far. They just like writing about beautiful emo boys. But it could, in theory, all come together.
In Larry Niven’s Ringworld books, one of the many varieties of humanoids which inhabit the Ring are vampires. They’re only of animal intelligence, but very comely, and apparently have incredible pheromones, which make them irresistible to most other humanoids. They’re also, unsurprisingly, very fertile among themselves, and a hunt by a pack of vampires often results in a lot of intraspecies mating, too (though they don’t attempt to feed off of their own species).
Some of the intelligent species have taken to keeping vampires captive, and using the pheromones they produce in brothels and other adult establishments.
I’m not about to reread them, but if I recall correctly there’s a sort of vampire code in Anne Rice’s novel, one tenet of which is that you only give the “dark gift” to people who are suited for it: not too young,* not too old, of sound mind and body, and meeting a certain standard of attractiveness. (Of course, the vampire code is adhered to inconsistently and enforced arbitrarily.) Vampires do seem to develop a certain charismatic allure in their post-mortal phase, but they don’t exactly start out as uggos.
The child vampire Claudia was considered an abomination.
This is the exact explanation given for the irresistible sexiness of the vampires in Twilight. They’re all impossibly beautiful, have inhumanly pleasing voices, and smell alluring.
I’ve sometimes idly wondered how we ever got from the grotesque, rather more zombie-like vampires of most folklore to the sexy beasts of modern fiction…
I suppose, in some way, the vampire represents the primary fear of death, perhaps the most fundamental of all fears; and there is a certain, almost Freudian link between sex and death, being both at the opposite ends of the circle of life and responsible for the strongest drives in human beings, and also subject to huge taboos in modern society, which gives them that titillating air of forbiddenness.
So the tension you get from putting the two most defining human urges, ‘avoid death’ and ‘reproduce’, at odds with each other might also be a reason for sexy vamps.
In Tanya Huff’s Blood books, it’s mentioned that people who are turned to vampires are almost always made by vampires who are in love with them, so they tend to be young and good looking. They also tend to be from the nobility, because it’s a lot easier to get out of an aboveground tomb.
From Sluggy Freelance : “Wow! When you become a vampire, men become broad-shouldered and muscle-bound and women become tall and thin! You ever think of selling this on QVC ?”
I think that there’s been something of a merger between the vampire and the succubus/incubus. In the Dresden Files books White Court vampires are even referred to as “succubi” and “incubi”.
Ah yes, that’s a good observation! They’re both also connected to Lilith, Mesopotamian storm demon turned Adam’s wife (later Cain’s, I believe? There’s certainly also a vampire connection involving him).
Selection. The ghastly, half-rotting, ghoulish or just generally ugly vampires get staked as soon as they are discovered crouching over their first corpse. The pretty ones get a chance to explain themselves and/or eat their discoverers.
Transmission. Being highly attractive, especially if female, seems to increase the risk of vampire predation 5000%. If you accept the thesis that vampirism is a contagious disease, then it stands to reason that the population most likely to be bitten is the population most likely to become infected.
I like the gross scary vampires of Robin McKinley’s Sunshine. The main vampire is described as ugly–they all are–and his laugh makes the female protagonist (though they are allies) want to vomit. There’s nothing sexy or alluring about them; they lure their prey through magic vampire evilness, not beauty.
I used to be all pissy about sexy Vampires. “Where does this bizarre infatuation and hyper-sexualization of Vampires come from?”
Then I read Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I don’t know enough about Vampire mythology and its history in literature to make any definitive statements, but that book opened my eyes to the fact that it wasn’t Anne Rice’s fault that Vampires are sexy, it was a Victorian author who managed to create a seductive yet grotesque creature called Dracula.
However, I think that perhaps Stoker was aided by a culture in which so much was forbidden (or at least forbidden to talk about). In the modern age, a lot of the allure of Dracula is eroded by the fact that sex and pleasure are such a central part of our culture.