The things that obsess a chap... Everyone knows what a Ten (as in Perfect Ten) is, but what's an eight? Or a five? Okay, here's how it goes.
First the general rules. These scores do not apply to anyone under sixteen or over fifty-five. For gallantry, women over forty-five retain their score at that age to fifty-five, unless it gets better. Anyone's score can vary from day to day and even hour to hour: a Seven can, by choosing her clothes and haircut and carrying herself with an unusual vivacity, be an Eight for a day. I work with a girl who looks like a Seven only because she refuses to let her Inner Eight shine through. If it did, she'd be taken less seriously at work. It's my personal opinion that women reach their best in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties – with the exception of a handful of models who burn bright and out. Men reach their best a little later. Young people can be a bit puppy-fatty and blurry of feature for my taste – as if they are as outwardly uncertain as to the exact shape of their cheekbones as they are of their personalities.
Now the specifics. Ten is Penelope Cruz and Christy Turlington, George Clooney and Clive Owen. Fit, sexy, handsome, beautiful and with added magic. Tens can and often do make a living on or because of their good looks. Not all actresses and models are Tens, but few Tens aren't. Tens are the people that other people want to think they look like.
Eight is top-end generic: catwalk model / actress, fit Spanish / Russian / French / Sloane / California girl. Ditto for boys. The keys are refinement, class, style, manners, charm, a sense that they take care of their appearance. Trophy wives and Handsome Gay Men are all Eights. Eights almost always went to fee-paying schools. Very few men are Eights – except for a few years in their early twenties. British male Eights are either gay (Rupert Everett) or put on weight and turn into Sevens (Colin Firth). All the pilots in Battlestar Galactica are Eights. Kylie Minogue is a fine example of an Eight (generic pretty Aussie girl) who made it to Ten (around the time of Spinning Around) and then returned to Eight.
To judge from the comments on the Vice Do's and Don'ts, Eights are American size Tens.
Sevens are generics who can't be bothered to try, or to whom Nature wasn't quite as kind as it was to their Eight sibling. A good-looking generic with a foul mouth or really bad dress sense is a Seven (at best). Seven is the default setting for reasonably fit sixth-formers and undergraduates who haven't yet decided what they look like and who they are.
So far we've been tracking the beauty axis. Seven is where it ends: the Pretty Line. Seven and above is genetic. If you're a Six or below, you will never make it above the Pretty Line. This is the fundamental unfairness of life.
Sixes have one feature that puts you off and one that you like. If they went to the gym and wore exactly the right clothes, they might pass for Seven on a sunny day. Sixes are still sexy, actually, come to think of it, Sixes can be sexier than many women above the Pretty Line. Most attractive or sexy women are sixes, because attraction and sexiness are unrelated to beauty. Any man who isn't obviously handsome or pretty, and isn't a fat slob either, is a Six.
Five is a special and very subjective category: rough but shaggable: you would, but you wouldn't want everyone to know you had. We're talking sex here, nothing to do with beauty, charm, looks or anything else.
Now we've come to the end of the sexy axis. From now on it's sexless all the way. Don't ask me how people get to be sexless: there are a lot of them and for all I know they get laid more often than people above the Pretty Line. I have no idea what sex with a Four is like, but since the human race continues to reproduce large numbers of them, I assume other Fours are content. To be blunt, Fours and below may as well be a separate species, as they will never mate with anyone with a higher score. Four is what happens to sixes when they get married, have kids and live in the suburbs. Go to the NHS drop-in centre in a nice suburb on a Saturday afternoon: all those young mums who brought in the kid with earache? Fours. Not sexy.
Zero is fat, foul-mouthed chav. Do you care about the difference between and One, Two and Three?
Which brings us to Nines. A Nine is the prettiest boy or girl in the room unless there's an actual Ten there - but they don't have the Magic. If a Ten walks in the room and causes everyone to faint / gasp / whisper to each other / stand back, a Nine causes everyone to decide that he / she will be (insert your hopes here). Skiers will think you ski; backpackers will think you backpack; sun-hunters will think you know every beach in the world and bookworms will think you've read everything. Whatever the fantasy, it gets projected onto a Nine – even Tens project. The only people who don't are other Nines. When everyone finds out you're not like that, they get so pissed off with you. Find a photograph of the young Brian Prothero or Nick Drake.
I used to be a Nine until age and a few bad years turned my face into a featureless mask I barely recognise each morning when I shave.
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