The bold and the not so beautiful?

Memphis, Tennessee: the worst of the worst?

Talk about a waste of time! Travel+Leisure magazine has ranked the 10 American cities with the most and least attractive people, according to the discerning (?) tastes of its presumably oh-so-attractive readers.

Aside from the cruelty of the exercise, there is the problem of credibility. Obviously, there are no statistics on city-by-city "attractiveness," so the whole thing is completely subjective. Journalism at its most idiotic.

Anyway, the cities that supposedly have the best-looking folks, in ascending order to the coveted No. 1 slot, are Nashville, Denver, Austin, San Juan, Honolulu, Salt Lake City, Miami, Savannah and San Diego. Topping the vanity sweepstakes: Charleston.

The put-a-bag-over-their-heads crowd is to be found in Santa Fe; Kansas City, Missouri; Houston; Portland, Maine (“a blur of blandness”); Washington, D.C.; Orlando; Anchorage; Philadelphia; and Baltimore. At rock bottom on the homeliness scale: Memphis.

Perhaps the maligned residents of that second batch of cities should rank the country's ugliest magazine staffers. Or maybe even the most and least attractive staffers at one magazine in particular. It shouldn't be too hard. Just ask two or three people what they think and bingo, instant ratings.