None that I can tell.

There’s a popular website where you can post pictures of your face and/or your body (in parts or as a whole) and then wait for others to rate your physical attractiveness and desirability.

Posting a head-shot at an internet dating site is just another version of “rate this face” but with much deeper ramifications. If you’re judged and found wanting at a public website, you’ll get a low score from the peanut gallery. If your face is judged unattractive at an internet dating site, the ramifications are far more grievous: You could be alone for the rest of your life.

The process of posting my pictures online for the entire world to judge was agonizingly painful and the steady stream of rejections that followed multiplied my pain tenfold. Despite all that pain, there was really only one thing that I hated even more than rejection:  Loneliness.

Many mornings and evenings, I’d plop down at my computer and log into my account, only to find those three dreaded words at the top of the web page: No new emails. Each time those words appeared, it felt like yet another “I don’t think you’re very attractive” vote from some anonymous man out there on the world-wide web.

Each day that my email inbox remained empty was a bold affirmation that yes, I really was as unattractive as I had feared. That was on my better days. On my not-so-good days, the empty inbox brought forth a torrent of tears and a growing dread that I was destined to spend the rest of my life alone, just because of my less-than-average physical appearance.

Read more here.

A gorgeous 25-year-old woman named America Ferrera plays “Betty Suarez” on the popular ABC sitcom “Ugly Betty.”  The Hollywood-inflicted “uglying” of this Hispanic beauty is a paper-thin veneer, and really does little to hide Miss Ferrera’s natural good looks. It’s not hard to look beyond the extra-bushy eyebrows, gray-metal braces, uncoiffed hair and unattractive glass frames, and see that Ms. Ferrera is quite beautiful.

In addition to her lovely facial features, Ms. Ferrara has a well toned, shapely, feminine form. Slap on some braces and stir up the extra-bushy eyebrows and voila, you’ve got instant ugly? If that’s the case, there’s little hope for the rest of us.

If “Ugly Betty” is the measure of an ugly woman, we’re all in trouble deep. We “average women” are in trouble. Mainstream media is constantly force-feeding us the crazy notion that we have to be beautiful to be worthy, or even worse, to be loved.

In the powerful book, Flesh Wounds author Virginia L. Blum talks about an interview she had with a famous plastic surgeon. He told her,

The way you look has a lot to do with whether you’re going to attract somebody else. Let’s be pragmatic about the fact that if a woman cease to be attractive physically, it affects the physical, intimate relationship. I’ve seen women who have not had particularly good relationships or haven’t had a relationship with men for a long time and I make them look younger and prettier and they go on to get married and have wonderful, stable relationships. There’s absolutely no question that the face-lift helped them. We live in a real physical world (p. 127).

Ms. Blum responds to this with her own insights:

[The plastic surgeon] spoke with such authority. Yoked to his honesty is a kind of fiction about the transformative possibilities of plastic surgery. You can change her life. You can make her someone whom someone else would be willing to love. More to the point, if she isn’t succeeding on the dating/marriage market, it must be because she’s not attractive enough. That’s the most unsettling part of his account, isn’t it?

The self-evident undesirability of the woman who isn’t young and pretty. Young and pretty. You can’t have pretty without the young. As a feminist, I am indignant. Outraged (Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery, Virginia L. Blum, p. 127).

Like Ms. Blum, I also feel indignant and outraged. And Ugly Betty may be an award-winning sitcom, but the problem with it is, it perpetuates the tiresome message that’s been drilled into women’s heads for decades now. Ugly is a problem. Fix ugly with money. Spend money. Get pretty and then you’ll get love, because then you’ll be worthy of love.

In other words, money buys love.

In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf writes that women’s magazines make their money by selling women on the idea that they’re suffering from a disease of “terminal ugliness,” and that this opens the to sell billions of dollars of “cures.”

And that seems to be the subtle message of Ugly Betty. We “less-than-beautiful” women need to spend a little more money on better glasses and better haircuts and invisible braces and electrolysis and then - only then - will the burdensome mantle of “ugly” be lifted off our shoulders and our true beauty will be revealed. And then, maybe then, we’ll find true love.

We just need to spend a little more money to be cured of that horrible disease of “terminal ugliness.”

I live for that happy day when I turn on the evening news and find that the male news anchors are young, svelte, well-coiffed and gorgeous, and the women news anchors are pudgy, untanned, hairless and unkempt. That’ll be my proof that the age of enlightenment has begun.

And so many people have asked me, “Why do you think of yourself as ugly?”

The short answer is, I don’t.

However,  during my years in the world of internet dating, at least two dozen men rejected me because (they said)  they didn’t feel “chemistry” or I didn’t have “The Look.” As most experienced female daters know, this is a frightfully indelicate way of saying, “You’re not pretty enough for my tastes.”

I chose the title of my book with much forethought and care. And I chose the word “ugly” because I know so many women who gave up on internet dating after experiencing the persistent and ruthless assault on their self-esteem. The book, in fact, is not about ugly women, per se.

It’s about the fact that in this internet dating culture, women are judged first and foremost by their thumbnail profile picture, often to the exclusion of all else. That’s what it’s really about.

And what can you really learn about someone’s character, integrity, maturity or goodness by looking at ¾” picture?

Nothing.

Back in the day, we met through church gatherings, the workplace, social organizations or common friends. And in those settings, you could really learn about a person; their likes and dislikes, their integrity and behavior and intellect and capabilities.  And that’s a far better way to get to know someone.

For years and years, we taught our children that one should never judge a book by its cover, yet now we’ve created a system of pair-bonding that does just that. During the time that I was dating, I felt like I was being browsed. I wanted to find a man that’d decide I was worth more than a cursory glance at my “cover.” I wanted to be studied.

And ultimately, I found that man. As I look at this experience in the rear-view mirror, I feel sympathy for my women  friends who did not have the courage or resolve to endure as much rejection as I endured. Finding a suitable mate shouldn’t be so rife with heart-ache, disappointment and rejection. Unfortunately, for the less-than-beautiful woman, internet dating is no fun whatsoever.

And all because - it would appear - that society has taught men that women should be judged by their cover.

In the 1930s, The “Monitor-top Refrigerator” quickly became one of General Electric’s most popular appliances. Its design was based on a sound principle and a highly efficient plan: The compressor sat atop the fridge, and heat extracted from the appliance cabinet naturally moved up and away from the refrigerator.

According to all reports, these were also unusually well-built appliances, with a life expectancy of 25 years - or more. Today, appliance aficionados are always on the look-out for these vintage refrigerators, because with a little work and a few new parts, they can be restored to their original condition and live on - indefinitely.

Heretofore, no one has created a reproduction Monitor Top refrigerator which is a surprise, especially consider how hot these used appliances have become. A thoroughly restored three-door Monitor Top fridge (fully restored) can fetch $10,000 or more.  For more information and detail on these appliances, click here.

When I was researching The Houses That Sears Built, I read 32 years of American Carpenter and Builder, a popular building magazine of the early 1900s. Whilst studying its pages, I found an ad for a Monitor Cupola and a few bells rang in my tired brain. Was this where the “Monitor Top” fridge got its name? The resemblance between this Monitor Cupola and the GE’s compressor was sound. I’ve googled all the terms I can think to google and yet to no avail. I love to know - is this the source of the moniker Monitor-top?

Update: A friend found a link explaining that monitor-top GE refrigerators got their name from the iron-clad Monitor Ship from The Civil War. Maybe that’s where Monitor Cupolas got their name?

Want to read more about Rose? Click here.

Ad from 1915 building magazine showing Monitor vent

An image from a 1930 magazine, showing the GE Monitor Top

Full ad from a 1930 magazine

And you thought Warner Brothers was just a Hollywood Name. So did I, until I stumbled across this advertisement in a 1903 Ladies’ Home Journal. The advertisement boasts that their $5 corsets are “rust-proof.” I’m not sure what corsets were made of but apparently there’s some steel involved in their manufacture. And it seems to me that if a lady were given to perspiration, she could develop a serious rust problem.

Wait, I said that wrong. Let’s see. Horses sweat, men perspire and ladies “glow.” Okay, so if a lady “glowed” she could have a serious problem with her corset rusting. Unless of course, she had one of Warner Brothers’ Rust Proof Corsets.

I wonder if the corset makers sued when the movie makers got famous?

As of 1903, Warner Brothers offered ladies a "rust-free corset."