BeautifulPeople.com: Only The Sexypants Need Apply

‘ Welcome to BeautifulPeople

“The sexiest website in the world today” – CNN

Do looks matter to you, when it comes to selecting a partner?

Do you want to guarantee your dates will always be beautiful?

No more filtering through unattractive people on mainstream sites

Meet beautiful people locally and from around the world – now ‘

This is the text that greets you when you visit BeautifulPeople.com, a new internet dating site.  As you probably guessed, it is a dating site for beautiful people.  How does the site decide who is a beautiful person?  To become a member you have to submit a photo of yourself.  Over a 72 hour period existing members vote on your picture and decide if you are beautiful enough to become a member of the site or.  If you get enough positive votes in that period you are granted full access to the BeautifulPeople network.  Yes, seriously.

This is the first dating network of it’s kind.  It begs the question, do beautiful people need a dating network?  Doesn’t the dating network of beautiful people already exists and isn’t it called the club or the bar?  Critics of the website have called it cruel and discriminatory for excluding people who aren’t deemed hotties by other members.  And exclusive it is.  In an interview with the BBC Greg Hodge, the Marketing Director of BeautifulPeople.com, spilled the beans that only 1 in 15 people who submitt pictures make it as members onto the site.  From the BBC interview:

‘ “Being accepted on to the site is the beauty equivalent of entering in to Mensa,” claims Greg Hodge, the marketing director. But he rejects suggestions that he is promoting an unrealistic view of beauty. Yes, it’s elitist – but that’s what people want, he says. And every avenue in life discriminates against some in favour of others.

All we do is give an accurate representation of what society’s ideal of beauty is. You are voted in by your own peers.” ‘

The site is being called ‘Facebook for the beautiful people’ and it is obvious that ugly people need not apply.  I like to think of it as “Are you hot or not 2.0″.  I don’t know why this is but people do seem to like being judged by others, and there probably is a thrill when you make it behind the velvet rope and make it inside the club.

Tags: beauty, dating, internet

This entry was posted on October 30, 2009 at 11:10 am and is filed under Science & Technolgy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.