MIRROR MIRROR

by H

I was skimming through the entertainment section of the Star today when the advice column caught my eye. A guy supposedly in his 20s had written in, saying that he was depressed because he didn’t have a “drop-dead gorgeous” girlfriend. Instead, he’d only been able to date girls who were “sweet, nice, and cute, but not HOT”. Ellie’s advice to him was that he had a deeper rooted problem, and that he should maybe not be so fixated on finding someone “hot”, but should focus on getting some therapy instead.

As a matchmaker at one of Toronto’s many dating agencies, this is a lament I hear often, and not just from guys in their 20s, but from people in every age category, from fresh-faced 20-somethings, up to 70 year old grandmothers, who, by that age, you’d think would know better than to be fixated on outer appearances.

Although “Blue” describes himself in the Star as “a good looking guy”, it’s likely that he isn’t all that. Certainly, looking at the pictures of the appearance-obsessed service members that I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, I feel safe in saying that it’s a pretty good bet that “Blue” isn’t nearly as attractive as he thinks he is.

This isn’t to say that he is, in fact, an ugly guy, or even average. Chances are pretty high that he’s a fairly good looking guy, but no one that you’d risk your bodily safety for by navigating your way through a drunken dance floor at Dance Cave on a Saturday night.

Contrary to popular belief, most of the people that are fixated on dating only “gorgeous” or “exceptionally attractive” people aren’t those who are a ten on the attractive scale, but are in fact closer to a seven, maybe even a six. It’s these types of people that seem to think that being linked to a very attractive person in a romantic sense conveys an air of attractiveness upon themselves as well. After all, why would someone very attractive not be dating someone who is just as attractive as they themselves?

What I’d like to tell these people, (once they stopped their whining), is that they need to go see a therapist about why exactly they’re so obsessed with the physical appearance of those around them, instead of being focused on what those people can bring to them as individuals who are smart, caring and funny.

It’s not that I’m saying that looks don’t matter, because they definitely do.

However, the next time I have a self-perceived Brad Pitt on the phone telling me how the Keira Knightley-esque girl that we set him up with wasn’t up to Angelina Jolie standards, and how that consequently ruined his weekend, I might just have to bite the bullet and tell him that he may want to start worrying less about the superficial things, and more about what is more important, like personality and compatibility.

Or, short of that, I could do what I swore I would do the other day after a particularly aggravating phone call with a narcissistic client: Go to IKEA, buy a mirror, then send it to the hapless member with a note taped to it saying “Look in this mirror, and tell me what you see, because your mirror is clearly defective”