Just How Ugly are You?

U-1: No ugliness. Beautiful inside and out. If you are a woman, you are probably living with dwarfs and hiding from a wicked queen. Birds help you with your chores… animals avenge your poisoning. If you are a man, you have an abnormally strong chin and tend to pick fights with dragons. If you are waiting for me to provide a REAL LIFE example of someone at this level, you’ll be waiting quite a while.

U-2: Real beautiful people always have a flaw. You’ll never find it because people this attractive never let uglier people get that close to them. The sad thing is, unless you are Bono, being U-2 is only temporary. A little age will drop you to U-3 in a heartbeat. A lab accident involving exploding clouds of acid and you might drop to a radioactive U-9 in an afternoon.

U-3: Attractive and accessible. Someone you can talk to without her bodyguards grabbing you by the throat. She may not want anything to do with you romantically, but, she doesn’t have any attitude about it… unless she’s just been demoted from U-2.

U-4: Barely pretty. Attractive in the right light. If you are a guy, some U-3 woman settles for you when you hit your thirties. If you are a woman, you might get to stand next to a used Pontiac in an ad for your brother-in-law’s car dealership.

U-5: Neutral, as far as looks go. How attractive you are is completely dependent upon who you are standing next to. If you are standing next to an attractive person AND an ugly person, how you look will depend upon the optimism of the observer. Some see the glass as half ugly and others see it as half-full…

U-6: Kinda Ugly. Endearing, though… cute, like a mastiff or a pug or Rene Russo. People who think that beauty is only skin deep usually can only handle this much ugly. A big nose… one eye a little lower than the other… no earlobes… It’s the kind of ugly that a single trip to a cosmetic surgeon would take care of.

U-7: Functional ugliness. If you are big and this ugly, you’ve got a career in bouncing… your job is essentially eighty percent done when your clientele lay eyes on you. A man that ugly MUST have fought simply to exist… a lot. Charles Bronson built a career on those looks. A woman that ugly will reach high levels in whatever corporation she hooks up with. You’ll think people are thoughtfully listening to your instructions but, actually, they are thinking to themselves, “She’s got to be competent because NO ONE would employ someone THIS hideous”…

U-8: This level isn’t so bad. At this level of ugliness, people treat you better because they see your looks as some sort of handicap. You’ll notice the word “ugly” sticks in their throat when they try to use it in your presence. The adult thing to do would be to coax them into treating you like everyone else; however, I’d advise milking it for all it’s worth.  I do…

U-9: If you are this ugly, you are probably haunting an opera house somewhere. You are pure ugly, inside and out. You are the beast from Beauty and the Beast. Sure, Belle fell in love with him but most experts think that was due more to the Stockholm Syndrome than physical attraction.