From our original archives! Please forgive any old links and formatting quirks.

Thinking of posting a photo of yourself on HotOrNot.com? How passé and self-centered of you! Check out the latest interactive site for rating and judging others’ attractiveness – CanDoBetter.com.

WARNING: It’s totally addictive, in a slightly evil way.

The site’s premise is that you can upload photos of yourself and a potential romantic partner, and visitors can then vote on whether “He Can Do Better” or “She Can Do Better.” Or maybe, just maybe, you’re a “Perfect Match.” If the voting masses determine that one of you can do better, then the site offers a social dating network at your fingertips, where you can find someone with whom you’re more compatible (on the relative scale of photogenic hotness). Don’t trust yourself to know if someone is up to your standards – “Let The World Decide!”

The revamping of this site happens to coincide with last weekend’s release of “She’s Out of My League,” an Apatow-esque movie that explores what happens when a dorky, average guy tries to date a beautiful, successful woman. As the leading man’s friends constantly remind him, he’s a “5,” while his love interest is a “hard 10.” Therefore, the couple’s chances of working out are basically zero. Again, the idea is that others might be better at determining who is right for you, based on your level of attractiveness, than you are.

Can the judgments of our friends, families and random website visitors really determine who we’re going to end up with? How much weight do we now give to what others think of our potential partners?

Science would probably argue that there’s some truth to these ranking systems. There is a psychology theory that always raised a massive stir in my undergraduate social psych classes – the theory that attractiveness can be ranked on a fairly objective scale, and that people of similar attractiveness levels tend to end up together. According to the theory, we all assign “attraction points” to ourselves and to those we meet, and then we subconsciously seek out friends and lovers who share the same number of points. So in reality, the odds that a “5″ and a “10″ would end up together are tiny (although it gets a bit more complicated when you consider the fact that men’s rankings usually factor in additional assets like wealth, intelligence, status, etc).

So maybe CanDoBetter.com and “She’s Out of My League” are just playing on our natural human tendency to judge our (and others’) potential mates in a clear-cut, numeric, ‘agreed upon by society’ way. On the other hand, this willingness to have others weigh in on the appropriateness of our romantic choices may be just another example of an indecisive dating culture in which everyone is secretly wondering if they can do better than the person who is sitting across from them or on the other end of that flirty text message. This fear of selling yourself short amidst endless possibilities has always been a part of big city dating. But with sites like CanDoBetter.com, there’s no longer a geographic limit to the nagging thought that there might be someone out there who’s better for you. As a New Yorker, I can tell some girl in Montana that she is wayyyyyy too hot for her boyfriend.

I wonder if that relationship will withstand 87% of the voting population agreeing with me?

Mar 17, 2010

0 F-YEAH! F-YEAH!