SouthFlorida.com | City Link Magazine

So what exactly is a hot professional? Is it someone who shows up for work every day, does a damn fine job and leaves the office/fire station/gumball factory/county morgue with her head held high, knowing she treated her co-workers and clients with the utmost fairness, integrity and respect? Is it someone whose love for her job is so genuine that her dedication alone makes her hot? Or is it just someone who looks good in a lab coat or nurse's uniform?

Honestly, we're not entirely sure. It could be any or all the above -- or none at all. Hotness is a subjective concept. What's hot to one person may not be hot to the next. Some of us at City Link find journalism to be a hot profession. But as the dearth of best-selling journalists-in-swimsuits calendars attests, we are sadly alone in this opinion.

But this issue isn't about us. It's about the 16 women featured on the following pages whose hotness is easily quantifiable. Ana Arango, for example, is a 22-year-old banker whose burning pride in her home country makes us want to board the next plane to Colombia. That's hot. Pilates and yoga instructor Alicia Olink is not only on a mission to make South Florida a more-flexible place, she also wants to become the Betsy Ross of rock stars. That's hot, too. Sarah Grubs, meanwhile, spends her days exploring the Everglades, getting sliced by sawgrass, sidestepping rattlesnakes, surviving ostrich attacks and, in the process, trying to save endangered species. That's really hot.

So in the case of this photo essay -- and next week's all-male Hot Professionals Issue -- hotness is not subjective. It's right there in black and white, from Melissa Rentz's high-end-furniture sales to Alev Tugcu's self-described "jockette" nature to NiFlame Barrett's fashion designs. And maybe, just maybe, it will one day be hanging on a dorm-room wall, with little red X's marking off the days of the year: The Men and Women of City Link calendar. Or maybe not.