PRETTY, UGLY AND PRETTY UGLY ON THE ALCOHOLIC SCALE
ELISABETH KING
COUNTRY and western singer Mickey Gilley first warbled Don't the Girls all get Prettier at Closin' Time over 30 years ago. Yet the cheeky ditty still strikes a chord and produces hearty guffaws with lines like: If I could rate 'em on a scale of one to 10, I'm lookin' for a nine, but eight could work right in. A few more drinks and I might slip to a five or even four. And rueful nods and knowing smiles are guaranteed with the punchline: But when tomorrow mornin' comes and I wake up with a number one. I swear I'll never do it any more.
But, as with many long-held views these days, a group of scientists in the UK has proved that the myth of ‘beer goggles' is dead wrong. At least for men. Researchers at the University of Leicester asked over 240 men and women in bars and cafes to look at photos of women and comment on their age and attractiveness. Not stone cold sober, of course, but after they had swigged a few drinks and self-rated their state of intoxication from ‘relaxed and benign' through ‘blunted and disinhibited', ‘boisterous and over-expressive' to the brutally honest ‘unambiguously drunk' - although I doubt that someone in the last stage could tick the right box, let alone say unambiguously.
Several of the snaps of 10 young women aged 17 were digitally altered to make them appear younger or older, so that features, hair colour and face shapes that could produce a lower rating simply because they did not appeal to a particular viewer wouldn't muddy the waters of perception. Makeup was also applied digitally to create Mickey Gilley's observation that Closin' time puts a glow on every face.
According to the head of the study, Dr Vincent Egan, the effects of alcohol and prettying up a woman's face did little to change a man's judgment of her looks: "This finding suggests that neither interfere with how old or attractive we perceive someone to be." But worse was to come if you have ever fallen back on the excuse that a drink or two lead you astray. "Another interesting finding was that, overall, participants who drank alcohol actually rated all the women in the photos as less attractive, compared to the participants who hadn't drunk alcohol as a control. This flies totally in the face of the commonly held notion of ‘beer goggles'. In conclusion, Dr Egan pronounced that "male mate preferences are not easily disrupted".
But there's good news for guys from Canada. The '70s country hit should really have been entitled Don't the Guys all get Handsomer at Closin' Time. Researchers at Lakehead University in Ontario found that women who drink only modestly lose part of their ability to rate how good-looking a man's face is. Or, rather, they are less able to detect male facial symmetry, a key marker which semaphores attractiveness and good genes when women go in search of a partner.
Women don't even have to drink a lot to rate a facially unfortunate man much higher. Dr Kirsten Oinonen supervised a study which asked 45 young women, classified as typical, non-alcoholic drinkers, to look at 60 pairs of male faces where one of the men was much handsomer than the other. Findings showed that the more alcohol the women had drunk in the previous six months, the lower their score was in rating a good-looking guy better than the average-looking guy in each pair of photos. We're not talking unambiguously drunk, either, The girls started to see a man as more appealing than he is after only five drinks in a four week period.
According to Dr Oinonen, "Even when sober, these women were worse at judging facial symmetry, and therefore found less attractive men more attractive. Given that symmetry is associated in attractiveness of faces, the study does suggest the possibility that alcohol intoxication in young women may decrease facial symmetry perception." Translation: an average-looking guy has a much higher possibility of snaring a partner who is more attractive than he is ‘at closin' time' than a woman has. And he doesn't have to stand on his wallet or wave a set of Porsche keys, either.
About five years ago a brewery in north-east Germany, the Neuzeller Klosterbrauerei, decided not to leave such important matters as increasing your ‘pulling power' to chance and perception and launched its best-selling Anti-Aging Bier. A blend of mineral water, spirulina (an algae rich in vitamins and proteins) and antioxidants added to the traditional ingredients of beer - water, hops and yeast - the beer claims to do wonders for the body, soul and spirit. The German Beer Brewers Association refuses to recognise the brew because its composition deviates from the Reinheitsgebot, the German beer purity law, but that has proved no impediment to its popularity.
This key to a better complexion and a more youthful appearance is a dark beer containing 4.8 per cent alcohol. Regular beer is naturally rich in antioxidants, which help to fight the signs of premature aging, but Neuzeller Anti-Aging Bier contains 10 times the antioxidants of a standard glass of lager. At first, claims the brewery, people were sceptical about the beer's purported an anti-aging remedy, but once they tasted it they loved it and ordered it again and again. Maybe that's because they only thought they looked younger. And for most people that's plenty good enough.