Lucky I'm loved 'cause the looks are gone

I don't want no scrub.
A scrub is a guy that can't get no love from me.
Hanging out the passenger side
of his best friend's ride
trying to holler at me.

TLC, 1999


Last night Anita and I went to Bravo Cucina Italiana for dinner. We didn’t have a reservation so we were handed one of those little vibrating, blinking spaceship discs and directed to the bar to wait until a table became available. The hostess who handed me the mini-spaceship never made eye contact. I had a little bit of difficulty getting the bartender’s attention. Other patrons avoided eye contact as well; when a guy in his early 30s with perfectly-coiffed hair and an expensive leather jacket made his way around the bar, I stepped back to let him pass and he seemed to not see me, let alone acknowledge my courtesy. We ended up being seated at a dark, out-of-the-way table in the corner. The service was good and the food delicious but something was different. I felt unconnected to the other 250 people in the room and I wasn’t sure why. Then I realized the problem: this is how 49-year-old bald men with protruding bellies who wear jeans and hoodies to upscale Italian restaurants are treated by the younger, more beautiful people of the world. This is what happens when the looks fade.

• Research shows attractive people have more occupational success and more dating experience than their unattractive counterparts.

• A team of researchers from the University of Miami discovered that physical appearance and personality have a positive effect on earnings in the marketplace.

• Researchers from the London School of Economics said that physically-attractive people have above-average IQs, with good-looking men around 13.6 points above the norm and attractive women 11.4 points above average.

This sure is good news for pretty people. (I’ve got to call b*llsh*t on that last one, though; I question whether Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears can even spell ‘London School of Economics.’) But what about the rest of us?

I guess I’m lucky that I work from home now and don't head to an office full of young, attractive, intelligent colleagues every day like I used to. I’m grateful that I don’t need to suck in my gut and scope out lonely women in the local watering hole every night in a desperate attempt to not sleep alone. I’m thankful that love is blind and beauty is in the eye of the beholder in my house. And I take comfort in knowing that beauty always succumbs to age eventually. Every time. No matter what.

I want my kids to grow up knowing it’s what’s inside that matters. I want them to agree that superficial’s not super at all. I don’t want them to end up sitting at a dark table in the corner unless they want to. Oh, and I want them to own the restaurant. So just stop it, society. Willya?




Sources: “Study shows attractive people earn more,” February 16, 2011, Alexandra Leon, themiamihurricane.com; “Attractive people have higher IQs, UK scientists claim,” January 16, 2011, news.com.au; “Looking Good: The Psychology and Biology of Beauty,” December 2002, Charles Feng, Human Biology, Stanford University.