by Michael Cronin

Created on: October 04, 2010

“Tell me what you don’t like about yourself?” was the question made famous by character doctors Christian Troy and Sean McNamara on the recently retired FX television series Nip Tuck. While we live in a society that rewards beauty for the sake of beauty itself, it is hard to say that someone’s appearances do not matter. After all, don’t we all secretly get a little bit of pleasure every time we see how cute Lindsay Lohan looks in that orange jump-suit that she has grown so accustomed to? I digress, think Marilyn Manson and Evan Rachel Wood.

People get together for many different reasons. Many people know one of those couples that make their friends scratch their heads thinking, “How did these two get together?” If beauty is important to someone, then they will probably gravitate toward attractive people. Those of us that are more concerned with a complete, or at least more substantial, relationship will probably be more concerned with the overall contents of the package. With all of our inherent well-meaning virtuous responses to this topic, when asked the question, “Could you date someone who is ugly?” The realistic follow-up to this question is, “How ugly?”

It is not often that one gets the chance to quote the linguistic and philosophical diatribe of Dennis Rodman. However, it was Dennis that said, “I don’t care how good-lookin’ a woman is, somebody, somewhere is tired of (expletive) her.” And there you have it; we all want what we don’t have. Attractive women can sometimes be caught musing, “Why can’t I just meet a nice guy?” There are nice guys everywhere. They are all over the place. Swing a dead cat in the air and you will undoubtedly hit a nice guy in the face. There are nice guys that want to jump off of a bridge by the dozens every time they hear an attractive woman say that they just wish that they could meet a nice guy. I would like to officially coin this The Jennifer Anniston Complex. To these women I might suggest that it is entirely possible that you are just a gigantic pain the ass.

In the meantime, there is a reason that on a scale of 1 to 10, 10s tend to end up with 10s and 2s tend to end up with 2s. While I am certainly not a 10, I am by no means a 2 either. So again I ask, “How ugly?”

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