Rating scale has ugly flaws

Have you ever been “rated?” If so, you might be familiar with the nagging, insecure feeling that comes along with being evaluated and judged on your physical appearance. The empirical system of “hotness” rating assigns people a number on the scale of one to 10 (10 being extremely attractive and one being the human equivalent of a mole rat).

Daily Trojan | Rita Yeung

The reason we feel inclined to evaluate other people’s levels of physical attraction is elementary. It is a simple part of our mating system in which we seek out potential partners by judging their appearance to determine whether or not they would contribute the genes for strong, healthy babies. We all do it on a daily basis, consciously or not — all it takes is one look to decide whether or not someone is worth pursuing.

Our society has become so comfortable with expressing our views on others’ hotness, or lack thereof, that it has become problematic. After all, we are sensitive creatures and would all like to think we are desirable. As soon as a gaggle of guys starts hollering about how hot one girl is, every other girl in the room is going to feel at least a little insecure, if not jealous. Indeed, most of us are curious about how others would rate us and secretly hope that we’d be rated generously (at least a seven, come on!).

The soon to be released film, She’s Out of My League, centers around this rating system. A dorky boy falls for a beautiful girl, and the conflict lies in the fact that she is a 10 and he’s only a five, according to the filmmakers. The movie has launched a unique marketing campaign urging people to go online and “GET RATED!” The film also has online ads all over Facebook and celebrity websites frequented by its target audience (teenagers and 20-somethings, i.e., us).

Yes, it’s true: In case you’ve never been subjected to the superficial analysis of your peers, you can turn to the film’s website (GetYourRating.com) to find out just how hot you really are. On the surface, the site is actually pretty harmless; all you have to do to get rated is answer three arbitrary questions about yourself to get a score (the racier the responses, the better). Afterward, visitors have the option of creating a profile to compete for the chance to have their photograph plastered on a billboard in Times Square in an ad for the film.

This is where the advertising tactic gets ugly. Users’ photographs are posted to the website along with their designated rating, and others are allowed to vote on their favorites and post comments on each picture. There are hundreds of photographs on the site — hundreds of individuals looking for validation in the most judgmental and shallow environment possible.

The comments on the photographs are, of course, brutally honest, thanks to the anonymous nature of the Internet.

Plenty of other rating websites have created this public forum for superficial criticism in the past, carving out a comfortable niche within our admittedly cruel society in which we take pleasure in knowing that there are others out there who are less attractive than ourselves.

What is worrisome, however, is the fact that this film is elevating the practice of rating others to a new level of acceptance and entertainment. Middle and high school students, so easily impressionable, could embrace the hotness rating idea proposed by the film and put it to use with greater frequency than before.

The marketing campaign for She’s Out of My League is offensive on multiple levels. First, it highlights physical appearance as a person’s most important quality — which is obviously not a practice we free-thinkers tend to encourage. But more than that, the film promotes the recreational subjection of others, as if debating over numerical assignments is a game we should all be playing at parties.

Granted, the message of the film is that any average guy can end up with a stunning leading lady, but its focus has been primarily to encourage audiences to evaluate each other along with the characters in the film.

As residents of Los Angeles — the U.S. capital of cosmetic surgery, spray tans and dieting — we are no strangers to the pressures to be attractive. In fact, USC students are subject to an even greater standard because of the supposed overall hotness of our student body.

According to a 2008 list created by popcrunch.com (a serious academic source, no doubt), USC has the No. 2 hottest student body in the country. We lost to Arizona State University, but we beat out UCLA, which scored a lowly No. 7 (fight on!). Of course, the list fails to hold any actual weight, but this is just another example of those in society ranking others to assert superficial superiority.

Our university is supposed to garner a sense of pride over being “so ridiculously good-looking,” as Zoolander would put it, just because someone thinks our student population would score an average hotness rating of nine.

Admit it: your chest puffed out ever so slightly when you read our ranking.

Physical beauty is a quality we admire and covet. Though of course other qualities are also factored in determining someone’s overall value, the practice of hotness ranking seems to follow us wherever we go.

It might be human nature to appraise each other, but we certainly do not need to glorify the act. Let’s end this competition of aesthetic worth. No matter what, there will always be someone who is hotter than you and another who is uglier. Can we please move on and stop obsessing over what others think about us?

Surely we can find something more productive to do with our free time than argue about who’s hotter.

Amy Baack is a senior majoring in cinema-television production.