Sorry, but you should have laid off of the Christmas cookies. You are obviously no longer beautiful- get off our turf.

So, the online dating scandal of the week has surfaced: thousands of members have been kicked off of Beautifulpeople.com, which claims to be just for the gorgeous, supposedly because they posted pictures of themselves over the holidays and New Year, which apparently weren’t too flattering. Robert Hinze, the founder of the site, actually referred to the supposed online beauty perpetrators as “fatties.” Sounds like a well-bred man.

Besides the fact that the website, and its founder, are ridiculous because well, they are, here’s my opinion: It is impossible on an online dating site to EVER get people to put up photos of how they really look. Because people are putting their best foot forward precisely because of the fact that photos are what people see first, they know that they better be good. That means they might use a picture from three years ago when they were tan and 120 lbs, even if now they aren’t close to that.

So now that we know that people put up their A+ photos, let’s think about how we can actually find out- as the online dating peruser, which of the men or women we’ve picked out on a site based on their photos and profile would actually be attractive to us if we met them in real life? Because this is the ultimate challenge of online dating: finding someone online who you would actually be compatible with and attracted to face-to-face.

There are a few answers to this question.

1)     We can follow up on someone ourselves (facebook, myspace, etc.)

2)     We can talk to friends who actually know them

3)     We can choose our sites wisely, as in the ones who have verification systems for their members

#’s 2 and 3 are only available on one site and one site (or rather network) only. Meezoog created itself as a network precisely so that people could correspond with their prospects in a supportive environment: with information from their friends and member verifications, instead of blindly hoping that “Nycrichhottie” is actually rich and a hottie (of which he is probably neither). Also, because Meezoog only signs up people with their real names, you can check up on them on facebook before you even hit the “message me” button.  Basically, Meezoog is on the up and up. It’s the only dating mechanism online that enables you to come as close as possible to “what you see is what you get.”

But let’s forget about Meezoog for a minute and go back to Beautifulpeople again. Why is the concept so ridiculous? Well, for one, because beauty, as the saying goes, is only skin deep. I, for one, would much rather subscribe to a site for ‘smart people who care about the world’ than one for beautiful people, who can often be self-absorbed, callous, and aloof. But that’s just me.

However, on second thought, let’s let this site thrive, and consume all of the people of the caliber of, for example, Ms. Cooke, one of the site’s loyal members.

“Ms. Cooke says that she’s been on one date since joining the BeautifulPeople.com late last year (so obviously, the site is really working), and that had the man she went out with appeared “chubbier” than he advertised in his photo, she would have been disappointed. After all, it’s beautiful people, she says, and not fat people, who she wants to date.” (ABC News)

Enough said there.

So let’s let these high-caliber individuals take themselves out of the dating market by mating with one another…that is unless they decide to cheat on their “beautiful” significant others or spouses. Oh, no worries, there’s a site for that too. Welcome Ashley Madison, for cheaters who want to have affairs on the sly by putting their photos on the internet. People are just so smart.

Let the scandals continue…