Vicious Scores

"Three," we said unanimously about the crazy looking woman walking in the library door. 

"And the only reason she gets such a high score is because she is so interesting," Jaime elaborated. 

We had been rating people at work for several weeks now; it passed the time and gave us a few laughs. But one day we looked at each other. "We never rate ourselves," I said. 

"I'm too scared," he said. 

"Yeah."

"And really it depends on the day," he added.

"Yeah." I looked down, afraid to meet his eye. I didn't want his harsh eye judging me. I didn't even want to judge myself.

"Some days I might be as low as a four and others I might be a ten. Depending on how my eyebrows look. Or how skinny I feel. And doesn't personality have a lot to do with attraction?"

"Yeah."

"A person can increase their score by three or four points just by putting a little effort into their look, having a little confidence and being really cool." He laughed and looked down. "I hope I'm that kind of person."

"It also depends on what your type is," I said. "Even if I know person A is objectively more attractive than person B, I could still be more attracted to person B. So should I give person B a higher score? The more we rate people, the more I don't understand the system. Are we rating their specific features? Their bodies? Their aesthetic for the day? Our attraction to them? These are all very different things. Someone could have a ten in features and a zero in my attraction to them."

"That doesn't make any sense," Jaime said. "Why wouldn't you be attracted to someone with perfect features?"

Unable to explain, I shrugged. That day I realized, when I rated people I felt bad about myself. I stopped playing ever after. 

Decades later.

I notice a lot of online conversations rating people, mostly women; and most of these ratings are in a critical way. 

Margot Robbie, one of the most beautiful women alive, is called mid. "She's a six, maybe a seven," men gage. 

A random man approaches a woman on the street asking her how she rates herself and she says she's a ten. Random Man takes a picture of her and shows it to another random man. "How would you rate her?" he asks. "Four," the second man says. People in the comments gang up on the girl saying how fat and ugly and delusional she is. How dare she rate herself a ten!!!

Any video with a woman acting attractive, there will be men in the comments degrading her looks, grading her attractiveness in numbers. If she is stunning she's a seven. If she's not quite stunning, she's a four. 

A four tells her, she's not a monster, but she is on the ugly side of the spectrum and she needs needs to be put in her place. 

Now the internet is playing the rating game that made me sick decades ago, only they're playing globally and with far more ruthless people than me and Jaime. 

It took me a minute to realize that these internet raters are not rating women against all the other women in the world, they are only rating them against other dating material, and by other dating material, I mean every woman in the public eye. Celebrities and Instagram models and any social media platform. Women ranging from teenagers to their early thirties. Women dolled up, posed and photoshopped.  The bar is very high. No one is a one or a zero, because those are the unnoticeable unmentionable ones. No one is a ten, because that position is reserved for Monica Belucci, and she is probably still considered a tentative eight by the most angry critics. 

These ratings have the viciousness of Cinderella's stepsisters shredding Cinderella's dress before the ball. If these raters walked into a bar and saw the woman they rated a four, they would probably find her the most attractive woman in the building and offer to buy her a drink.

And I can't help but ask, "What rating would I get?"

"It depends on the day," I respond. "And the camera angle. And I'm not as young as I used to be. Or as skinny. And maybe I don't want to be Monica Belucci. Maybe I don't want attention for my looks. Maybe I never have wanted that. I just want to feel attractive for myself and I don't need to be a ten for myself. I prefer to be an acquired taste. Subtle. And how is that rated? I don't know. Wasn't that always the problem with the rating system in the first place?"

I read a book once that described a woman as "not beautiful, but attractive." I like to believe that I'm in that category. Or maybe I'm just the delusional girl who rates herself way above her class.