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The Twenty-One Point Scale

September 28, 2006 2:45 AM

hysical beauty undeniably exists. Unfortunately, so does phsycial not beauty. That's the way things are, and there's nothing wrong with that. Especially since all beauty is fleeting and meaningless. What's really important, the thing we should really pay attention to, is a person's personality. At times, I may be bewildered by someone's physical accoutrements, but that's a separate thing from thinking someone's a good person. Every time in my life that I've really been attracted to a woman, it was primarily because of their personality rather than because of their looks. Although I've clearly made many mistakes about which women I should be attracted to. Whatever, fuck you.

Having thus disclaimed, I think that physical beauty is nonetheless awesome. And it can be fun to discuss where people might fall on a scale of attractiveness. It's also fun to see how different people value different assets. I, for example, pay a lot of attention to noses, arms, and necks, in addition to the more obvious areas of the female form.

But what scale should be used? There's the tried and true 10-point scale. But that's inadequate for several reasons. First, where is the line between "attractive" and "not attractive"? Is it between 5 and 6, so that a 5.5 is average? That seems awkward - it should be easier to assign a neutral value. Second, the resolution of the ten-point scale is very low. If a 5 is not attractive but a 6 is, the that ony gives you 5 degrees of attractiveness. A seven is a pretty high number, but it's the second-worst rating an attractive person can get.

So, I propose the adoption of a twenty-one point scale. The scale would go from -10 to 10, with a "0" being someone who is neither attractive nor unattractive. Negative numbers denote unattractiveness, while positive numbers, obviously, denote attractiveness. This means that there are now 10 degrees of attractiveness or unattractiveness, rather than just five. And the neutral rating is much more logical.

The scale is geometric rather than exponential, meaning that someone who scores a "10" is ten times more attractive than someone who scores a "1." A logorithmic scale might give even greater resolution, but it would be hard to find someone that's so attractive that they're 100 times more attractive than a "1."

The key to the scale, though, is calibration. It would be unfair, for example, to set your "10" as Adriana Lima and then expect women from the real world to measure up to that standard. Instead, you should calibrate the scale for your particular purpose. Are you talking about just the UW Law School? The entire UW campus? Are you talking about movie stars? Any person you've ever seen?

It's important to set your boundaries. Who's going to represent the epitome of attractiveness? Who's at the other end of the scale? Who's a zero?

Of course, you can discuss whether you should take personality into account, or base the ratings on merely physical desirability. Another interesting experiment would be to see how much of a difference an excellent personality could make. How many points could someone gain by having a great personality? Five? Ten?

All interesting questions.

Is this immature and superficial? Perhaps. But all I'm proposing is a rubric for something everyone already does. And, in any event, it's fun.



17 Comments


gunter said:

You have beautiful cheeks. They are an 18 in my book.

September 28, 2006 7:12 AM



Ismael Tapia II said:

I don't even know what that means . . .

September 28, 2006 11:06 AM



tRJ said:

You also can't make Adriana Lima a 10 because she is not a 10. Unless we were doing a 21-point scale of all people who look like they were punched in the mouth.

September 28, 2006 11:24 AM



Vice said:

I don't know about this scale, man. Your mom just went from a 6 down to a 2.5, and I'm not sure that's a fair representation.

September 28, 2006 1:29 PM



Ismael Tapia II said:

Yeah, well. Where would you rank Weston?

September 28, 2006 2:09 PM



Sanjeev said:

Ewwwwww. If i had to rate you, you'd totally be -10. Congratulations on being the first human being on this earth to make me barf at the plain sight of your face...

September 28, 2006 3:14 PM



Vice said:

That's a fair question. It's hard for me to place her on an objective scale, because not everyone appreciates a shrewish, lung-hacking old bat who reeks of tar and wears hideously low-cut outfits so as to prominently display her sagging cleavage the way I do.

If this comment needs to be removed for any reason, I completely understand.

September 28, 2006 3:15 PM



Ismael Tapia II said:

ZING! Oh, man, Mr. Sanjeev, I feel burned. And that's because you burned me. I've gotta say, I've never felt so "put in my place" before. Your cutting, witty commentary not only exposes my latent superficiality, but also my own personal lack of phsyical attractiveness. This adds a layer of hypocracy to my maniacal rantings and ravings which, but for your comment, would have gone entirely unnoticed.

More importantly, you've successfully identified my complete lack of self-esteem. Now, because of your annonymous, two sentence comment on my blog, I shall lose innumerable hours of sleep as a I fret and worry that you, Mr. Sanjeev, do not find me attractive.

In short, fuck you.

September 28, 2006 4:05 PM



sadielady said:

wtf, man, you deleted my comment? blog nazi.

September 28, 2006 4:47 PM



Ismael Tapia II said:

I did not delete your comment! As should be evidenced by the fact that I left that other guy's comment up, I am not a blog Nazi. Sorry, I really don't know what happened.

September 28, 2006 4:53 PM



Anonymous said:

dude, you picked my fav victoria's secret model. thank god i'm with ryan, otherwise we would have to fight over the same women.

September 28, 2006 6:18 PM



sadielady said:

ok, well it wasn't that great anyway; i was kinda drunk when i wrote it, so i don't know how much sense it really made.

September 28, 2006 9:27 PM



sadielady said:

and wow, that woman is hot. i don't want to have to compete with that.

September 28, 2006 9:29 PM



Ismael Tapia II said:

tRJ, Elise, sadielady,
I don't really know how hot Adriana Lima is. I just chose her because she was the first famous person that's generally regarded as hot that I thought of.

I mean, personally, I'd probably melt if I saw someone like that in real life. But on the twenty-one point scale for famous women, she might only be an 8 or 9, even though in the "real world" category, she'd clearly be a 10. Who would your 10s be?

September 28, 2006 9:56 PM



Utah said:

I think that in order to help quantify the scale, you ought to include certain general "sections" that various people fit into.

For instance:

-10-7: No
-7-3: Only when drunk
-3-0: Eh
0-3: Doable
3-5: Increasing urge to "stick her"
5-8: Pork until it falls off
8-10: Now

That way, people will have a general guide to help calibrate the rankings.

On an unrelated note, I've never felt more shallow in my entire life.

September 28, 2006 11:11 PM



Ismael Tapia II said:

I like the way you think, Mr. Utah. I think that your proposed addition lends a certain air of objectivity to what would otherwise be a completely subjective scale.

On a completely unrelated note: The entire world is shallow.

September 29, 2006 1:34 AM



TheExpat said:

I wouldn't say Adriana Lima is attractive, in fact she's kind of scary.

Just look at her: She looks like the kind of woman who would demand ass sex on the first date, and then not wash her ass on purpose.

Scary.

September 29, 2006 7:30 AM



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