Why ugly men always attract the prettiest women

by PAUL KENDALL, Daily Mail

If the face you see in the mirror each morning makes you wince, take heart.

And while you're at it, throw away all those beautifying pills, potions and creams in the medicine cabinet and cancel your subscription to the gym.

Because being ugly may actually help you attract the opposite sex, scientists believe.

They have found that having an 'unusual' appearance can be a good way to charm a mate.

It might help explain, for example, why Pretty Woman actress Julia Roberts found the somewhat facially-challenged Lyle Lovett alluring enough to marry.

Or why balding, bearded author Salman Rushdie - no Adonis in anyone's book - managed to beguile the stunning model Padma Lakshmi.

Lead researcher Dr Rob Brooks said: 'Ugly individuals can sometimes do better than good-looking ones.'

His conclusion is based on animal studies. These showed that some prefer mates which the majority find unattractive, rather than always chasing the best-looking members of the opposite sex.

Experts believe the same theory could hold true for people. Dr Paul Rainey, a lecturer in biology at Oxford University, said: 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

'If everyone is going after the most common characteristics, then someone who targets the rare ones, would have an advantage.'

Dr Brooks, based at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, said the phenomenon could be related to special proteins called MHC molecules, which are part of the immune system.

The more diverse a selection of MHCs you inherit from your parents, the better equipped you are to fight off disease.

Men with different MHCs smell differently. Not only can women detect that difference, but they also tend to prefer the smell of men whose MHCs complement their own.

This makes sense, according to Dr Brooks, because any children resulting from such a pairing would have more diverse MHCs.

And the variety of MHC molecules has nothing to do with a man's or woman's appearance.

As part of his research - which featured in today's issue of New Scientist magazine - Dr Brooks teamed up with researchers at James Cook University, in Townsville, Australia.

They studied how individual female guppy fish choose different males and found that, although all the females liked males with bright orange spots and large tails, a minority of females also liked males with black markings.

Previous studies of animals such as birds and fish had found that members of the same species tended to find the same things attractive.

It had been assumed, for example, that all peahens were attracted to peacocks with brightlycoloured, long tails.

But Dr Brooks' research now suggests animals do not have one ideal of attractiveness.

He said: 'People say, "I don't like what my mate down the pub likes".

'How do you reconcile that with a universal Hollywood idea of attractiveness?'

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