George Pelletier

My niece Kate and I have a running joke on when either of us sees someone who has a nice body but a rather unattractive face.

She’d say, “That guy had an awesome bod, buttah face. . .” Translated, that’s butterface.

You get the idea. It’s obviously gender neutral. And the opposite – meaning the person has a nice face but the body of Frankenstein is a butterbody.

I had a girlfriend in Miami who would fondly say, “I saw this guy. He had a great body. And a face to protect it.”

Like I always say, if you have nothing nice to say, come sit next to me.

Of course, this is all in jest. Butterface, butterbody. We’ve all had buttermoments.

There’s a picture of me floating around the internet from the early 80s when I was a groomsman in my friend Ken’s wedding. I looked like I needed a sandwich, a good barber and another sandwich.

I was so skinny I could look through a peephole with both eyes. I was skinny. I looked like a microphone stand. I could use Chapstick for underarm deodorant. You get the gist. It was during my 20-something butterbody phase. (Which has somehow crept up to my current age, but now it’s the “Revenge of the I Can’t Believe it’s a Butterbody.”

Most of us are pretty critical of our own faces and bodies. But for every one of us who has seen their reflection and says unprintable things, there is a butterface out there, wearing a muumuu, cowboy hat and not much else more, strutting down Main Street like they’re the mayor of Butterland.

You’ve seen these people at the mall. Jacked up and draped in a Louis Vuitton velour jogging suit and pumped-up Nike kicks, so much cologne they could tear gas a crowd and enough garish make-up that even mortuary make-up artists say, “Holy walking dead. That’s a crap ton of make-up.”

And that was just one guy I saw.

I give these people props and kudos because clearly, they don’t own a mirror.

When I was a club rat in San Diego, New York City and South Beach, we’d go dancing until the bars closed. And the lights would come up and you could see what you thought was hot all night long was now just simply a hot mess.

That’s why there is a famous adage for that: Go ugly early. Save time and money on nasty and unnecessary $23 vodka tonics, forget all the wasted hours looking through the fog machine and blinking, seizure-inducing lights and just go ugly early.

And then there is the coyote morning. I’d rather sleep alone than have a coyote ugly morning- you know the drill. You wake up and your arm is under the person next to you and suddenly, you’re at the Westminster Dog show. And you would rather chew your own arm off than wake up this individual who probably has a fantastic personality and a super neato job.

So what if the family had to tie a hambone around their neck just to get the dog to play with them.

But I digress.

Akin to a beauty contestant’s scorecard, a person’s attractiveness is ranked from one to ten. It’s presumed that beautiful people (eights, nines and tens) should only date each other while the “uggos” of the world (the twos, threes and fours) must stick to their own Quasimodo kind.

But every now and then, a couple pulls the switch off this genetic equilibrium. That would explain Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, Lyle Lovett and Julia Roberts, and Vin Diesel and anybody.

I’ve never dated ugly. I’ve dated good looking eights or nines, which I fear could possibly make me a lower number on the dating Richter scale.

I’m told that ugly people try harder in bed. No I don’t.

I’m told that ugly people, like our pets, are overanxious to see us. This is a terrible thing to suggest – that is, that dogs are ugly.

Dove skincare commercials have long told us that inner beauty is more important than outer beauty. If that’s true, why are you wasting my time trying to get me to buy your product? And beauty pageants should start with the question round. (Sample Miss Universe Pageant question: If you were Miss Universe, how would you solve world hunger? Contestant’s answer: “I would feed the children, then the adults. Kids are finicky and eat less.”

Dating is a drag, whether you go ugly early or go for the long haul. The Celebrity Dating Game is a new show that features bachelors or bachelorettes who all wield some sort of celebrity or Hollywood status. TV actors/actresses, film stars (adult film stars?), reality television personalities, etc. Ahem. Reality television personalities ARE the etcetera. Neo-celebs don’t need to find dates. That’s what their agents are for. And if you thought scraping the bottom of the celebrity barrel was Dancing With The Star’s job, The Celebrity Dating Game makes the contestants on Dancing With The Stars look like a Mensa convention.

Just remember. Beauty is only skin deep, but stupid is to the bone.