The Fairest of Them All

Stop the presses people, we have breaking news. Hold on to your rainbow sprinkle-topped strawberry shakes because this is big. Bigger than a 4 a.m. Grande Meal. Bigger than a nine-foot long plasma television in an eight-foot long room. Bigger than a U.S. Senator soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom. Heck, it may be the biggest story in the history of really big stories. Are you ready? Are you sitting down? Pay attention, because here it is. A study headed up by scientists at the University of Indiana has found that when given the choice for a mate, men desire hot women.

My brain hurts. Maybe it’s from beating my head against the wall, I don’t know, but I have a killer headache. I simply cannot understand how I could have been duped so easily into the wrong profession. If I had known twelve years ago that all I had to do to make a living was collect research grants to perform studies that tell people things they already know, I could have saved myself five years, a hundred thousand dollars and be internationally recognized among the scientific community. I could have been a contender!

I don’t know what idiot needs a scientific study to tell them that men like good-looking women. Are there really two-headed, three-eyed scale-skinned women living in the corners of their parents’ basements thinking that someday some man will love them for their personality? Human beings are attracted to beauty. Men like beautiful women, women like handsome men, everybody knows that. From the time we are able to distinguish what is beautiful from what isn’t – and maybe even before – we are drawn to more attractive people. Our entire social order is based upon it. Attractive people are looked up to, differed to, admired, coveted, respected, adored, excused, lusted after and generally given some measure of a free ride. Any moron with a pair of eyes and ears can figure that out. (My apologies to the blind and deaf.) Is a civilizations worth of evidence suddenly given cache because some lab coat prints a confirming sentence in a “scientific” journal?

The study has its flaws. It’s sample size is too small – only 46 participants – and was conducted in Germany. (Are we seriously going to take advice about love and relationships from people with a language that sounds like an eight year old with overactive mucus membranes hocking lugies on the sidewalk?) And in addition to that I’m not sure one can draw conclusions about “mating” from observing people in a speed-dating situation. I can’t speak for women, but I’m pretty sure men in speed-dating situations are far more interested in the short-term “act” of mating than the long-term process of mating. But I’m not interested in discussing the merits of the study. I’m just disturbed the study was commissioned in the first place. Isn't there a global warming study you people could be working on? Stop wasting valuable time and resources bludgeoning people with crap they already know! Quit telling me the grass is green and start telling me how I can get my dog to stop eating it.