Published September 2011
While I'll readily
admit to a large number of personality flaws (character building
flaws, I hasten to add), the one thing I am not is shallow. Even though I
enjoy the companionship of relatively good looking individuals on a
regular basis (lucky me), I've often believed that while visually
great first impressions may be important, there'd better be a sound personality behind those looks.
Growing up looking the
way that I did, it wasn't easy being fat as a toddler who then morphed into an
awkward, gangly pre-teen. This spate of biological angst lasted a few
more years until I discovered sports. Life was good as a jock for the
most part and stayed with me for a large majority of my early to mid
20s. Admittedly I allowed myself to 'develop' in the girth area as I
started hitting work and the bars harder and the gym less. I blame no
one but myself. And my propensity towards happy hour.
I have long accepted
that I will never be a ravishing beauty. My looks are passable at
best. If pressed, some would describe me as 'cute', but they are the
minority. I have skin that breaks out if you even look at it wrong, a
ridiculous amount of body hair which I do battle with on a regular
basis (I blame my ethnicity. And my dad's genes), deep set eyes which
are so laden with baggage I look like a stoned raccoon and I have a
nose. Not just any nose, I have a snout. You'd have to see it to
believe it. But all things considered, I'd like to think that I've
been able to use whatever few advantages I have to my benefit in a
variety of ways. Having a disturbing sense of humour is a great way
to get people to remember you.
Drinking them under the table might be
another too.
With all the
less-than-desirable physical qualities I possess, one would imagine
that I have a difficult time meeting people but it's not that
hard. You just have to let your personality (if you actually do have
one. You'd be surprised at how many people this applies to) do the
talking for you. And I know it seems as though natural selection will
always win out – superior physical attributes and genetics ensure a
great head start in life. We've been inundated with images and
findings that good looking people are treated better in life and end
up making more money in the long run. Until recently I often believed
that looks would get you far in life, and resigned myself to an
adulthood spent in abject loneliness, with a bottle of soju for company.
This morning I came
across an article that made me want to back the truck up. Everything
I believed while staring depressingly into a mirror wasn't true after
all.
Being gorgeous isn't
always a good thing and I snorted with joy at the realization of
this. A paper by University California, Santa Barbara in 2009
studied the mating patterns of fruit flies. True you may not
necessarily be of the insect species but it might interest you to
learn that male flies found certain female flies too attractive to
mate with – hence, these winged hotties were at a biological
disadvantage because of what the male flies perceived to be too
attractive and this interfered with the female's ability to function
biologically, normally.
The biologists at UC
Santa Barbara are quoted as stating that “among fruit flies, too
much male attention directed toward attractive females leads to
smaller families and, ultimately, to a reduced rate of
population-wide adaptive evolution.”
Even if we were to
loosely apply this formulae to humans of the hot variety, this does
make a little sense if you think about it. And I'm using my hundreds
of hours spent being a barfly (the puns, the puns), observing people
around me. Attractive women will almost always get more than their
fair share of male attention. Whether or not it's attention that is
wanted or required is a different matter altogether. The point is
they'll get it. The second point to realize is that said attention
may or may not always come from an ideal future mate. Actually,
scratch that. 9 times out of 10 it never comes from an ideal mate.
The UCSB paper further explains that the female flies are
“disproportionately courted and harassed by males attempting to
obtain matings”. Sounds like a typical night out at almost every
club I can think of, complete with drunken suitors bursting at the
seams with what can only be described as male bravado messily paired
with Dutch courage. It's never a pretty sight as they zero in on the
hotties, convinced of their stellar moves and lightning smooth
abilities.
While this is all
highly entertaining for me, most times I'm not sure if I should sit
back and enjoy the show, or pity the poor fools. And with the
onslaught of wannabe Alphas, the nice guys – the ones that would
probably make for the best mates – have a harder time even coming
within earshot of the hotties, sometimes due to intimidation at
someone's physical attractiveness, most times due to the fact that
the object of affection is probably already surrounded by more
aggressive suitors.
So what is my summation
apart from the fact that good looking women get taken down a little
peg in an almost pointless study? Hotties have problems just like the
rest of us after all. The flipside here is that life might be the
teensiest bit fair after all. In the meantime I'll just sit and wait
for my lunch to be served, observing the sexual stereotype of the
overweight, balding, rich old dude at the table next to me fawning
over a pretty young thing coquettishly playing with her food. Perhaps
some things don't change after all.
