what are YOU looking at?

say you're ugly. do you know it? seriously. am i ugly? would i know? would i care?

we all look around at the available mate choices and evaluate them on our own terms but there's no one who does not include "good looking" in their criteria. the difference is how we define good looking. or, so we say. we all seem to agree that brad pitt is good looking. i don't hear anyone denying julia roberts is good looking. we can all agree that christie brinkley, mel gibson, and johnny depp are good looking, right? what about adam sandler? laura san giacomo? jesse james? hmm? there are some people we all agree are good looking, and then there are people that we say... well... it's a matter of choice.

so how does this work? do we all have an innate sense of how good looking we are? are we genetically programmed to find someone in our own range of looks?

sometimes people pick a partner who's better looking. lyle lovett married julia roberts and say what you want about interpreting good looks - that guy is not good looking by any traditional standard, and ms roberts is universally considered to be good looking. yeah, yeah, lyle's a musician and that goes a long way. musicians are known for being sensitive and caring and intelligent and blah blah blah - and he may very well be all that & a bag of fritos. but - he is not good looking, and that's what we're talking about here. obviously in this case, julia was blinded by his other attributes, but their relationship didn't last - and was that in any part due to their mismatched good-lookingness?

so - we all sort of match up with people in our look range. from the first time i saw my old man right up to today, i have always thought he is quite handsome. i would like to think i am not too far off base on that b/c here's the thing -- i see ugly couples all the time gazing at each other like they are the bee's knees and i just have to think - what are they seeing? do they really see A Gorgeous Person, or do they see A Good-Enuf Person? are they like - oooo, look at my best-i-can-do mate, my settled-for partner! um... i don't think so. i think we all look at our mates and think - ah, now that's a looker!

if you look at your partner & don't think you've nabbed a looker, well that's just kind of sad.