HotorNot: 73% Dorkier Than Other Losers

A mediocre 7.6. That's me. So obviously not hot.

I was positive I wouldn't care about my Hot or Not score. I convinced myself I was too strong, too cerebral, too self-assured to be affected. Not vain enough to be bothered.

After all, beauty shines from the inside out, right? Isn't that the feel-good credo the rail-thin fashionistas over at Glamour, Elle and Vanity Fair are selling the body conscious women of today?

What a load of crap. What MILF-wanna' be doesn't wish she'd rank a perfect Hot or Not 10? Face it. We all care about how we look. We've been raised in a twisted Jean Benet celebrity beauty pageant culture that worships and rewards beauty and little else (other than fame and fortune, maybe).

Now Hot or Not offers us a guilt-free haven where we can literally judge everyone based on his or her looks, just like we do dozens of times a day quietly within the highly subjective confines of our pretty little heads.

Thanks to Hot or Not we can now judge the book by its cover to our cruel heart's content without feeling much at all from the comfort and privacy of our living room couches (or in my case, silky meditation floor pillows).

My tryst with Hot or Not began as a fluke, really. A gay friend of mine admitted to me that he often trolls for twinks via Hot or Not. He's way too much of a pus to post his photo for harsh public scrutiny, though. Honey, you know you'd be at least a solid 8, so what gives, sally pants?

Being that I'm a journalist, I'm a highly skilled snoop (the many who've been busted by me know who you are), so naturally I hunted around for my camera shy player friend's Hot or Not singles profile.

In order to view it I actually had to register and upload my own photo. So I did. (How did he slip through the cracks without uploading a mug shot like everyone else, I wonder? I suspect the answer lies within the Meet Me dating service.)

It wasn't long before I began compulsively checking and re-checking my (apparently repugnant to the nebulous Internet voting masses) honking ski jump French nose-centric Hot or Not photo, sometimes as often as two dozen pathetic, obsessive times a day.

(That's probably fewer times than I check my Google Analytics acount to see how many unique visits my fledgling newbie blog scores daily. I'm even worse with Google Adsense. How could I possibly justify the wholesale shirking of house chores plus staying up until 3 a.m. every day if I'm not cha-chinging any sell-out ad money into the family anti-budget? Talk about cha-chump Google change, man. Every penny counts, so I shouldn't knock it.)

My sad inaugural Hot or Not photo, a close-up pic I snapped of myself before striking out all gussied up on the strip in Vegas that I foolishly believed was s-s-s-searing hot, ranked a dismal, very disappointing 4.4.

Holy atomic shit pile, Batman! Have you seen the poor goons unlucky enough to be ranked 4s? We're talking so unforgiveably fugly that you almost have to look away from your monitor to keep from upchucking.

(Is that mean to say? Cruel? Probably. Must repent/restore dashed Karma points by volunteering for storytime at Moody Cheeks McGee's preschool ASAP.)

Four? A friggin' lousy FOUR!!! What a major, major ouch to my ego. And I truly believed that I wouldn't care how I ranked. Right.

My husband hopped the next misguided train on my Hot or Not pity party bandwagon.

"Well, actually, you look unusually warped in that picture," he said of my first Hot or Not pic, sweetly attempting to mollify my dented ego. "It's kind of fish-eye lens looking. You don't look that weird and cartoonish in person. And your nose ... OHMYGAWD!"

Gee, thanks, honey. I love you too.

To dig himself out of his marital trench, next my husband revealed a simple, one-step ploy that he guaranteed would reel in a much, much hotter Hot or Not ranking. A ranking I could live with and maybe even be proud of. How sick is that?


"Tits," he said, pulling on two patches of fabric on his T-shirt that covered his chest. Picture Mike Myers' turtle-necked character Dieter on Saturday Night Live squealing in a daft German accent, "I'm as happy as a little girl," and you get the picture.

"You gotta' upload a photo that shows your boobs," he said. "Some of the ugliest chicks with nice tits have ratings of seven and even higher. A nice rack is the key to a higher score, my dear."

Free your boobs and your ass will follow, or whatever it is the self-help dullards claim.

Mr. Hubby should have stopped while he was ahead. No such luck. "I can't believe I married a freakin' FOUR!" he bellowed loud and clear in our driveway, right in front of the neighbors. They already know we're freaks anyhow.

"Here I was, thinking you were hot all this time. A real MILF. I'm starting to question my own judgement, though. You've seen the fours, right? Damn, they're butt ugly. Maybe it's like when a mother has a baby and she doesn't realize how ugly it is. Maybe I can't see it."

That punk teased me like that for days.

Any critique on appearance, however mild or not, is tantamount to torture for a woman. We've been objectified and over-sexualized for so long that we've succumbed to society's addiction to idealized beauty, and even subject other women to the unattainable beauty ideal our own selves. Allow me to step down from my soap box.

Over the next few days my husband nagged me (and he never, ever nags me about anything), "Did you put a better picture of yourself up yet?" and "Am I married to someone better than a 4.4 yet?"

"What's your new Hot or Not rating? You might as well be a 1 if you're a 4.4" and the depressing littany rambles on.

I heeded my no longer closeted vainglorious husband's two-boob cents and posted a moderately decent but far from hot, somewhat busty photo taken of me by fellow American tourists at Stonehenge two Junes ago.

I hadn't yet weaned my daughter and my breasts were plenty swollen with nourishing nectar of the gods. A swanky padded bra didn't hurt, either. My freaky, trying-too-hard-to-be-cool-at-30, two-tone midlife crisis bleach job is questionable and the expression on my face is smug at best.

(Hey, excuse me if I wasn't exceedingly impressed by a curious cluster of massive, upright rectangle-ish rocks. They're ROCKS, people. I didn't even wake up my three little nappers to see Stonehenge. My 5-year-old, The Maestro of Mouth, is still pissed about it.)

So I figured I could bait a few extra Hot or Not points by showcasing such a cool, cosmopolitan venue in my mug shot background, even if Stonehenge didn't really turn my crank.

C'mon. We're talking Stonehenge. No one knows for sure who, what, why, when or how Stonehenge came to be but it's still one of the most amazing unexplained phenomenon in the world. That's got to count for something. There had to be a few Hot or Not brownie points lying dormant in all that heavy ancient stone!

'Next thing I know, my Hot or Not rating nearly doubles within hours of posting my boob-improved photo. As of today, I'm still a 7.6, a far cry from my bruised ego, walk of shame days as a 4.4.

Some 1,200 unidentified anonymous Web loonies have rated my fugly mug, deeming me 73 percent hotter than all the other women with begging for validation photos on Hot or Not.

"Who cares?" you ask.

Much to my own surprise, I do.

I admit it. I feel better with a Hot or Not score in the sevens than in the fours. Lame but true and you would too.

In fact, tonight I uploaded what I think is a hopefully more svelte image of myself in hopes of inching my ranking closer to an 8. How desperate for external validation is that?

My husband bet me a few unmentionable "favors" that he would obliterate my ranking within just a few hours of posting his photo.

To that hugely false prediction I immaturely snicker, "Nanner, nanner, pooh, pooh, you tragic 4.0, you!!!" and "Your score is even lower than my first score. Ha! You owe me now, so you'd better make good on your promises, Mister!"

Unable to hack the pressure (and defeat), my husband yanked his photo from Hot or Not. He said it wasn't because he was disappointed at his less than mine ranking.

"I just don't want to do it anymore," he shrugged. "It's so stupid." He's right.

My hubby's two-day Hot or Not run was micro lived. He crashed and burned on the charts lightening fast. Poor guy. I prefer to blame his questionable photo choice.

In the flesh, my husband's quite tall, dark and handsome and turns quite a few heads when he's spiffed up in his metrosexually tailored just-so business threads.

What can I say? I dig intelligent, sensitive bald guys, especially ones with such strong, gorgeous, protective hands. Stunning, I say. You're a 10 in my book any day, babe. My very own DILF daddy-i-o. Make that DIDF.

Just when I thought I was above shameless Hot or Not vanity, I discovered that I'm not. Not even close. Perhaps my vanity is tied up in living just miles from Hollywood.

Nah. It has something to do with just living. Living as a woman.

So how hot are you and would you care if you weren't? Would your husband/partner care?