Mixed Marriages: Inter-facial Couples
Posted: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 9:36 AM by Jaclyn Levin
Filed Under:
Fashion & beauty
(From Stephanie Becker, TODAY Producer)
You may have seen the story this morning) on "inter-facial" mixed marriages -- couples who aren’t on the same level of attractiveness -- as defined by Belinda Luscombe the Arts Editor at Time Magazine. She's written a humorous essay about being married to a much more attractive man (see their wedding photo to the right). In our phone conversation she compared him to Brad Pitt, while rating herself a 6 ½. Personally, I think she's short-changing herself.
For the taped story we interviewed Belinda and talked to an expert on relationships, Dr. Drew Pinsky who confessed that he, too, married up on the attractiveness scale when he married a model 15 years ago. (Judge for yourself by the photo below.)
Dr. Drew, as he's known, says because beauty is so subjective there aren't any studies on this phenomenon. So, I guess we’re all just guessing. For instance, I think Rob Lowe is just too pretty, gal pal Ro thinks he’s hot. I still swoon over Paul Newman with his grizzled agelessness, Ro thinks he’s old and wrinkled.
For our story we turned to some common sense experts: folks in downtown Seattle and a bunch of tourists in Santa Monica, California. What we found was universal. Everyone said that when an attractive woman marries an ugly man, it's all about the money. Only one person said that when a handsome man marries an unattractive woman, it's her bank account that counts. I'm not sure what this says about the gender gap.
As for me, I am the product of an inter-facial marriage. As Dad still explains (followed by a little too much leering laughter for a daughter to hear) "Mom was a real hottie!" Dad's gigantic ears and jutting jaw rank him not so very high on the male hotness index. But their mix still matches 47 years later.
I spent nine years in an attractively unbalanced relationship. In my eyes, at least, my boyfriend was way up on me in the looks department. Perhaps love is blind, but I would give him a qualified 8 1/2 -- (10 being George Clooney no matter what you think of his politics.) I qualify that number because of what happened in the midst of the first Persian Gulf War. He was working as a cameraman in the desert war zone. To accommodate his gas mask -- the haute couture of the time -- he shaved his beard to ensure a better seal in case of catastrophe. I was half a world away in our New York satellite feed room when suddenly my newly shaven beau appeared on my TV screen. I let out a shriek. My 8 1/2 had zero chin. His face seemed to fall off somewhere between his lower lip and upper neck. His beard was like ketchup on a veggie burger or chocolate sauce on no-sugar ice cream cone. It was covering the plain old ugly truth. I’m such a shallow person.
I did eventually see the woman he married after me. Before that I'd comforted myself with the fantasy that I'd been replaced by a babe, by some hot chick who far outstripped me in the looks department. In my mind's eye she was perfect, a tall, tan, thin, blonde, blue-eyed sensation. Now I might be exaggerating just a teeny tiny bit here, but she was definitely not all that. While it may lift my spirits to say that she’s a few rungs below me on looks ladder, that kind of behavior hardly rates. So for his sake and hers, I only hope that she’s his one, while I look for husband number 2, who I hope will add up to my perfect ten.
