Looks matter. The biggest lie we tell ourselves and others is they don’t. That lie is right up there with the devil doesn’t exist and the one about a fat, bearded white man who lives in the North Pole and jumps down chimneys every year on Christmas to give gifts while we sleep. As a matter of fact, that lie is more believable than the one about looks not mattering. I, on the other hand, will never tell such a lie to myself or anyone else. Growing up, I had the good fortune of having a mother and sister whose looks stopped traffic and I always noticed how people would respond to me whenever I was around mom and sis. Women in the mall would take a second glance at me, female classmates of mine disguised their interest in me by complimenting my “beautiful” mother and sister. From a very young age I saw firsthand how people responded to a man who had a beautiful woman around him, even if those women were family.

The attention I received from being around my mother and sister when I was younger has influenced my attitude about beautiful women today. In short, I always want to be around them, no matter the circumstances. If I’m on a bus or train and there’s open seating, I might leave my backpack on the open seat next to me until I see a woman I find attractive looking for an available seat. Whenever I’m waiting for the next available teller at a bank, I’m always hoping the cutest one will help me (even if I won’t say anything). And it all sounds so superficial, but it comes from an honest place. Maybe it’s different for men and women. In my experience, women are a little more willing than men to make concessions for a man who may not be their physical prototype. Such was the case for an ex of mine: When asked what type of man she usually went for for she replied, “Blair Underwood.” The number of underlines it would take for me to emphasize how much I do NOT look like Blair Underwood is infinite. But, what my ex did not say, nor did she believe is I wasn’t attractive at all. I don’t even look like Blair Underwood’s cousin, but to her, I looked good and at least she understood that much.

We all have our own idea what kind of people we find beautiful. As I always like to say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It just so happens I want to be holding the most beautiful woman in the room, but then again, who doesn’t? Even if it’s not true to others, let it be true to ourselves because here’s what happens: Stay with a person long enough and eventually the things we found most beautiful about them when we met — whether it be their eyes, their smile, their body — fade. I want to get as far out in front of this inevitable happening as I possibly can by dating a woman I find most attractive. It’s like my favorite joke: I never laughed harder than I did when I heard it the first time, but that’s not why it’s my favorite.

It’s my favorite because even after I say it or hear it a thousand times, at the very least, it makes me grin. The other thing about a beautiful woman is the feeling I have the first time I see her; it sticks to me no matter how brief or long the encounter. If it so happens the beautiful woman I see becomes a woman I get involved with, the feeling is like a life jacket for the times I’m drowning in her bullshit. Ideally, I will end up in a relationship with a woman I can call my best friend — a woman who’s my intellectual equal, spiritual, and compassionate — but she has to make me weak in the knees too. As Chris Rock once said, when we get married, we got to love the ugly in our spouse. All I want is to be with a woman whose ugly is most fine.