"We can't just sweep 30,000 ugly people under the carpet"

Isn't that just the best quote EVER?  It's from Greg Hodge, a man who works at BeautifulPeople.com, a dating site where you can, if accepted, "browse beautiful profiles of men and women without sifting through all the riff raff".  That's another direct quote - from the site itself, accompanied by a picture of some very irritating looking people in cut-out dresses and white vests who've presumably won the genetic jackpot, lolling around on a chaise longue.  They're accompanied on the chaise by a lion and a cobra...supposedly proving that the pulchritude of BeautifulPeople.com members is so immense that even deadly animals are rendered completely powerless in its presence.  And you could be one of them!

But...hold your horses a second.  You have to be accepted as a BeautifulPerson first.  For this, you submit an online dating profile and a photograph of yourself, which will then be screened by current BeautifulPeople for wrinkles, cellulite and general normalness.  You only get to look at, or speak to, the BeautifulPeople themselves if you are deemed by them to actually be one. 

Recently 30,000 people were given a brief glimpse of the BeautifulLife(.com), before it was discovered that a virus (known as the 'Shrek' virus, hur hur hur) had infected the site's 'acceptance' software and that they'd been letting any old Tom, Dick and Harry become BeautifulPeople.  Horrified, Greg Hodge and his associates quickly "sifted through all the riff raff" and dumped the 30,000 ugly people before they infected all the genuine members with spots, slight cross-eyedness and mousy hair.  They did provide a special counselling helpline for all the uglies, though, so it wasn't all bad. 

Now I realise I may have displayed a slightly condescending attitude towards BeautifulPeople.com and its members, in a way that only the truly non-BeautifulPeople can.  But that's slightly misleading, because I felt no sense of outrage reading that story. I just thought it was funny.  

If people want to join a dating site based on looks, why shouldn't they?  At least they're being upfront about what 99% of people do actually look for on dating sites...a nice picture.  To me, there's no difference between joining a site based on how beautiful you are and say, Mensa, where your intelligence is all that counts instead.  It's just...aren't you missing out a bit, only interacting with one type of person?

One of my most frequent arguments with my husband (bizarrely, seeing as we don't have, and don't intend to have, children!) is over private education.  He is insistent that it provides huge benefits, both educationally and in making future contacts.  But my argument is that children whose parents have paid handsomely for their education only meet other children whose parents have paid handsomely for their education, and I believe that when you're young you need to mix with as many different types of people as possible.  Sod educational standards.  If you show an aptitude for anything in particular you can learn more out of school (I only learned maths properly because my stepdad spent time with me going through the basics) - and if you've got the right attitude you'll succeed.  But to become an empathetic, socially aware and well-rounded person you also need an appreciation of different lifestyles and habits, and I just don't think all that is possible from privately funded education.

If you're beautiful enough to be accepted on BeautifulPeople.com, surely your life would become a lot more enriched and varied from mixing with the uglier end of the spectrum?  If you're a Mensa member, why not make friends with a Sun reader?

(But then, what do I know? I'm probably just bitter because I wouldn't be accepted by either Mensa or BeautifulPeople.com.  So just ignore me, eh?)