And now, from the "Prettyprof815's official new website and tire care center" files and Yahoo! News

Sudiegirl sez:

The pic on the left is my senior year portrait. The pic on the right is not me, but I'm sure whoever it is is really angry it's all over the internet. The following article makes me glad I've started my new Rancho Sudiegirl blog dating service, and I will continue to cater to the rest of us that don't qualify to digitally mingle with the "beautiful folks" that will be inhabiting this website. All four of them. At any rate, you know the drill...let's get this party started!

'Beautiful' Web site is only skin deep (However, stupidity is to the bone.)

By Olivia Barker, USA TODAY Thu Jul 28, 6:52 AM ET

Entry into BeautifulPeople.net is all in the eye of the beholders. (Let's just hope they're not as nearsighted as me.)

Officially launching Thursday, the networking site is the electronic equivalent of the junior high cafeteria, with the popular kids - i.e., members - voting on whether to offer seats to the hopeful hordes. Which means that unlike other online communities such as Friendster and Thefacebook, BeautifulPeople functions more like an invitation-only social club. (Oh goody...more social angst.)

The criteria are shamelessly superficial: a recent photograph (bikinis and bare biceps encouraged) and body statistics. Is your six-pack more of a two-pack? The site also accepts "people with personal/professional qualities that stand out from the majority" - like "Sandhill," an entrepreneur with a goofy grin who says his income is $1 million-plus. (Uh-huh...is that Monopoly money? Also, didn't that Eligible Bachelor guy on the "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?" show on Fox fib a little bit?)

An applicant's photo and profile is posted for three days. Members grade candidates of the opposite sex (to avoid Mean Girls-style competition) on a four-point attractiveness scale, from "Yes! Certainly!!" to - ouch - "No! Not at all!" (God. Can someone give me a shot of Demerol so I can be relieved of my misery now?)

Honest or horrifying, it's Mensa for the Chiclet-smile set. (More like the Tic-Tac brain set.)

"BeautifulPeople is the most genuine of all sites," says Robert Hintze, who started the cybercommunity in 2002 in his native Denmark and brought it to Britain in April. (OK...he brought this site to the country that gave us Austin Powers and all the Monty Python cast in drag?) Today's culture is appearance-driven anyway, so "why not make a place for all these people so focused on looks?"

On the surface, "you go, 'Oh, this is so lame.' But in some ways it is a great marketing opportunity," says Charlene Li, principal analyst at Forrester Research, a technology/market research company. Whether you're actually beautiful is beside the point, Li says; it's more about attitude. "Frankly, if you're a (legitimately) beautiful person, I'm not sure you want to be exposed in this way." (OK, how does one define a "legitimately" beautiful person, Ms. Li? You've introduced the concept, now let's just roll with it a little more.)

Discrimination against the ugly was made famous by HotOrNot.com, where visitors scroll through photos of would-be Bo Dereks and assign scores of 1 to a perfect 10. (The reason it doesn't go up that high is because most of the visitors can't get past 10 without assistance from your run-of-the-mill kindergartener.)

"We're getting people through that first hurdle," says BeautifulPeople managing director Greg Hodge. (Now, just get them to SPELL "hurdle", and then we're in business.)

Matchmakers at eHarmony.com, where a personality profile trumps a literal profile, aren't so sure that initial screening is necessary. "We have found that the inside is oftentimes more beautiful than the outside," spokeswoman Marylyn Warren says. (Well, DUH! How many market surveys did you have to do to figure that out! My grandma knew it. So do my nieces and nephew, and they haven't even graduated high school yet!)

Hodge insists theirs is a democratic system. Because members decide who makes the cut, not some burly guy behind a velvet rope, "we're giving power back to the people." (Just remember, a little power is a dangerous thing.)

But if at first you don't succeed, cap those teeth, inflate those breasts and try, try, try again - as many as 50 times, the number it took for one Danish woman to be deemed worthy. After three years of working out, her body got "really good-looking," Hintze says. (So now she needs a sugar daddy to pay off her Gold's Gym bill as well as all the expenses for plastic surgery and capped teeth. Lovely.)

Sudiegirl's final opinion will be in the form of a verse from a song I heard on "The Muppet Show" many years ago, when I was a wee sprite.

When you're ugly, you're ugly as sin.

But when beautiful's out,

Ugly's in.

When you're ugly like me,

you're in good company...

There are millions of us who're ugly!

Bye!