Friday, July 01, 2005

The Rules

If I'm going to do this "Beautiful Real Woman of the Week" thing, I need to have some criteria, and a method that's anonymous, but neither exploitive nor an invasion of privacy. Here's what I've come up with (and please give me feedback with your opinion/ suggestions):

1. I take pictures from online personals. For me it's going to be Yahoo Personals, because it's free and I already have a Yahoo account (not a Personals account, just an account). Plus, the photos have been put into public view by the women themselves. Not that they don't have a right to object, but I feel it's the least invasive.

2. I'm going to do searches of women between ages 25 and 40. It's arbitrary, but it's what I came up with. I don't want to exclude older women, but if I search 18-60, the sample's going to be very large and varied.

3. I'm going to search one large metro area from each U.S. state, starting with Maine and working my way roughly west each successive week.

4. I'm looking for "real women", which is a pretty vague term. Beauty is so damn subjective, anyway. Basically I'm looking for women who aren't obviously medically-altered or obsessive about their bodies, makeup, hair, clothing. Women can be any ethnicity, height or weight. My definition of beauty is pretty inclusive, but I will exclude women who look "too good", or who appear to try too hard to look good. I can't define it, but I'm going to pull a Potter Stewart on this one. What else can I do?

5. I will show my selections to my wife and she will help choose each week's "winner", to include a feminine perspective.

That's it. I have some candidates from Maine already. Let me know how ill-advised you think this project is. Thanks.

iPod: "Slob" by Weezer, "Sample in a Jar" by Phish and "In the Drink" by Barenaked Ladies.