How to Tell What League You’re In
If you don’t think “leagues” exist, just check your Tinder matches.
A lot of people would like to think the the phrase “she/he is out of my league” is just a phrase. Unfortunately, it’s often an objective truth. And apps like Tinder can provide evidence for this.
Have a look at your matches. Make an honest assessment of their average attractiveness. That’s how attractive you are.
Tinder (and the like) have created an organic marketplace where different tiers of hotness exist. Everyone using it has a certain level of attractiveness that they will swipe right on. Anyone below that level gets a swift swipe to the left. If you find yourself inundated with too many matches, you’ve earned the right to be more selective. But get too choosy, and you’ll be left with no one.
Of course, there are exceptions, and not everyone has the same standards of attractiveness. But on aggregate, the result is everyone getting matched up with the people they are “willing” to be matched up with.
Take me, for example. I’m super handsome, at least according to reports from my mom, who aggregates anecdotal data from her female friends each time I see one of them. As such, there are plenty of babes in my matchbook. But rarely when I swipe right on an absolute, stone-cold fox do I get the ever-satisfying “you’ve got a new match!” message.
[Sidenote: there should be a feature on Tinder and Hinge and all those apps where you can choose a song to play whenever you get a new match. Mine would be “You’re the Best Around”. Either that or “Freaks of the Industry”].
Of course, this is just based on the physical attractiveness of your photos. As Zoolander told us, there’s more to life than just being really ridiculously good-looking. Your personality, intelligence, humor, talent, and success can bump you up or down. Just look at Jay-Z. He’s so charasmatic and successful, that despite looking like Joe Camel, he managed to put himself in a league so high, only one other person is in it. Jay-Z and Beyonce are in a league of their own, and that’s why they were destined to be together. If either had married anyone else, they would be settling.
The point is, I’m in some sort of second tier when it comes to attractiveness. I know this, because (most of) the girls who swipe right on me tend to be in some sort of second tier. And I’m ok with that. I’m not going to get bogged down and upset by these unfair and impossible beauty standards society places on me. And it’s about time we speak up on this! Think about it: our culture keeps telling us that to be pretty, men have to be at least 6 feet tall, have a full head of hair, the abs of an Abercrombie model, and a package that could pass for a cucumber if it were painted green. I’m lucky enough to fulfill two of these requirements, and I’ll leave it to your skills of deduction to decipher which.
I could come up with a thousand different reasons why it didn’t work out between Mira and I, but the simple truth is that she was out of my league. Tragically, now I feel like I can’t settle for anything less than out-of-my-leauge, which is a pretty simple reason for why I’m single. Not that it’s any different from when I was younger, which resulted in hilarious and cringe-worth consequences.
Back in junior high and high school, I like to say I was in the middle class: I wasn’t one of the “Cool Kids”, but I was friendly with most of them, and I wasn’t getting picked on, either. The tragedy of it is that at the time — especially in middle school — all I wanted out of life was to be popular. Seriously, I wanted that so bad. I would chase the top-of-the-line girls, knowing that I had no shot, but also daydreaming that maybe — just maybe — one of them would decide that having good grades and being slightly awkward were desirable qualities. There’s a great 21st century philosopher who captured this perfectly in one of her many nuggets of infinite wisdom:
“When all you wanted was to be wanted. Wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now” — Taylor Swift, “Fifteen”
Of course, at no time was this popularity caste system more on display than the lead-up to my senior prom. I was all set to go with a girl who was a year below me, but you could make an argument that she was the hottest girl in school. I wouldn’t make that argument, but she was up there. It probably wasn’t leading anywhere — we were friends — but I was still pretty pumped. So of course about a week or two before the dance, she calls me up and informs me she’s been “talking” with PopularBoyX, and she’s going to go with him.
Luckily, by this time, my friends and I had realized that we, in fact, were the coolest kids in school, and that none of this really mattered. I ended up taking a different friend (who was more middle class like myself), and we had a great time.
Nonetheless, all of this is probably why I became such a slut in college.
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