As our list of the twenty sexiest ugly people proved last month, sexiness comes from an intangible place. Some people just plain got it. And some don't, even when they fit every textbook definition we have for beauty (symmetry, health, cheekbones). Here are our picks for the world's unsexiest beautiful people — a shapely gang of cold fish for whom beauty is, sadly, only skin-deep.
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20) Kobe Bryant Dear Kobe: You're about as beautiful as any man on the planet — except when you make that evil-gerbil face that you practiced in the mirror before the playoffs and which tells us much, much more than we want to know about your inner self. Just stick to the fist pump you stole from MJ. And, sure, you never got convicted for the rape charge in Colorado, but Mrs. Bryant can't have been too happy about that one. There's a big difference between being able to sleep with any woman on the planet and thinking you should be able to sleep with any woman on the planet. You're supposed to be such a clutch closer, but sometimes, friend, your best attempt is just not going to go in. — Jack Harrison |
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19) Carrie Prejean Not since Miss South Carolina decried Americans' insufficient access to, "like, maps" has a beauty queen prompted such national soul-searching. Prejean was California's representative in this year's Miss USA pageant. Asked about gay marriage, megawatt smile and Stepford stare firmly in place, she blabbered about freedom of choice before voicing her preference for hetero, or "opposite marriage." "No offense… but that's how I was raised," she explained. Leaving aside the hypocrisy of her holier-than-thou stance (topless photos were quick to surface), intolerance just ain't sexy. Then, in the wake of the ensuing national scandal, publicity-shy ethicist Donald Trump rallied to Prejean's defense. Once Trump's involved, it's time to pack up your genitals. — Billy Gray |
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18) Mischa Barton When The O.C. premiered, our initial reaction was, "The CGI budget for the show must be huge!" We later realized that this special effect was actually Mischa Barton, a (purported) human being, and not a collection of high-definition renders. And while she tried her hardest to inspire something like arousal — making out with other pretty girls, landing a role as a model in a new CW show, achieving independent motion — our first impression stuck, and so Barton will always remain just a little bit too uncanny valley for our liking. — James Brady Ryan |
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17) Alex Rodriguez Projected to be the greatest baseball player ever (but recently sludged in a steroid scandal), the New York-born, Dominican-American of African descent has the ripped athlete's bod, Frappuccino skin-tone, and purple lips of so many daydream fantasies. Wait, purple lips? What's up with that? Yeah, dude's got lavender kissers all right — lord knows why; maybe circulation problems? And lack of blood flow is actually what lands him on this list: the real reason this prettyboy ain't so sexy is the lukewarm diffidence he brings to all things (despite making twenty-seven mil a year). And if you know that a smooch from a superstar is going to give you chills — of the Arctic variety — how hot can he be? — J.H. |
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16) Reese Witherspoon There are two schools of thought here at Hooksexup on why Reese Witherspoon is not sexy. The first claims that Reese Witherspoon is just too adorable, having emerged fully formed from a rainbow and carried to this earth by a litter of puppies. The second makes the case that inside of her sugar-sweet exterior sleeps a secret bitch, waiting to be unleashed on an unsuspecting PA, or maybe Jake Gyllenhaal. Perhaps both theories rely too much on Witherspoon's iconic performance as Tracy Flick, who both baked cupcakes and destroyed lives, but that's the price for playing a role so well. Its effects may be felt long after the movie is over. — J.B.R. |
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15) Tyra Banks Where did Tyra go wrong? Was it her over-the-top job as host of America's Next Top Model? Her megalomaniacal quest to become the next Oprah? Coyote Ugly? Maybe, but we think it all comes down to the fact that these days Tyra resembles nothing more than a drag queen impersonating Tyra Banks. Anyone who's seen even a minute of the camp explosion that is ANTM knows that Banks has gone from Sports Illustrated cover girl to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane-level wacko. In fairness, were we ever to come face-to-face with her, our hearts would probably beat faster. But more out of fear than lust. — James Brady Ryan |
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14) Heidi Montag It seems like just yesterday that viewers of The Hills met a fresh-faced ingénue named Heidi. She was a fashion student, albeit for a week. She had a job, though it required little more than looking pretty while straddling a douche-magnet club's velvet rope. Then she met the incubus, Spencer Pratt. And now, at just twenty-three, she is nearly unrecognizable under her fake platinum hair, fake knockers (to be displayed in Playboy next month, as she will no doubt remind us) and fake piety (see: Playboy). Montag recently claimed that the devil got a hold of Al Roker after a contentious interview with the beloved portly weatherman. But we'd bet that the gruesome twosome (Speidi, a nickname they surely coined themselves) made their own Faustian bargain to achieve their inexplicable celebrity. Her own personality is unsexy enough, and her husband is surely the unsexiest accessory a starlet has ever sported. — B.G. |
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13) Jamie Foxx Jamie Foxx is an irony-free being. If you need proof of this, just watch the music video for his date-rapey single, "Blame It," co-staring Ron Howard and a man dancing in a giant panda mask. His paean to drunken women making questionable sexual decisions is so earnest in its desire to be a sexy club-banger that it makes you cringe, especially when you realize that Foxx is being completely sincere. It's that self-seriousness — which also carries over into his more successful acting career — that makes Jamie Foxx so easy to turn down. He may be making the jokes, but he definitely isn't in on them. — J.B.R. |
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12) Keanu Reeves Twenty years into his career, Keanu Reeves is still a prime specimen. That jet black hair. The intense eyes. That taut, lithe body. Mr. Reeves is a looker. It's hard not to tear that black turtleneck right off him. But, while his dullness is well-trodden ground, the Silk Road of cultural commentary, it can't be ignored. When a guy's been a drug-addled California pretty boy, a marquee movie star, and a rock bassist, yet is still considered boring, sexiness is but an illusion. There was actually some dissent among Hooksexup editors regarding Keanu's inclusion on this list, but "Because of The Matrix!" isn't a very convincing argument. — John Constantine |
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11) Orlando Bloom If Orlando Bloom had left acting after Lord of the Rings, he wouldn't be on this list. But few could have predicted the bomb that would soon drop on poor, simple Orlando. Here's a tip: when signing on as a romantic lead, make sure that your co-star doesn't out-sexy you while playing an STD-riddled criminal. Pirates of the Caribbean found Bloom totally overshadowed by Johnny Depp's allure, and he didn't help his own case by playing Will Turner as the most milquetoast pirate in history. Once he appeared in the unwatchable (and boring) Elizabethtown and the unwatchable (and offensively stupid) Troy, whatever spark he'd had in Middle-Earth had gone the way of elfenkind. — J.B.R. |
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10) Ben Affleck You'd think a mid-career tryst with the world's most recognizable diva Latina would up your sexiness quotient. Not so, since the grotesquerie of Ben Affleck's stint with J.Lo is nigh on impossible to forget. The preening nastiness of the "Jenny on the Block" video was bad on its own — and, hey, Ben apologized for that — but there's no erasing Gigli from the historical record. There's no un-seeing Affleck grinning like a doof at Lopez's crotch as she beckons him forward. ("Gobble, gobble.") Once you've cleaned the bile from your chin though, the whole Bennifer thing is actually kind of sobering. Was Affleck's put-on boyishness that alluring back in the Good Will Hunting days? Does the fact that he's a competent, be-stubbled director make him more desirable today? No. Because the guy may be smart and decent, but his public persona is as sexless as a set of Barbie dolls. — J.C. |
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9) Elisabeth Hasselbeck The good-looking-but-insufferable Hasselbeck clawed her way into the public eye with a stint on Survivor: The Australian Outback. Unfortunately for us, she emerged from one bush to become a shrill shill for another on ABC's grating kaffeklatsch, The View. The staunchly conservative Phoebus to former co-host Rosie O'Donnell's liberal Quasimodo, Hasselbeck makes for queasily compelling television. Her lack of political credentials (Elisabeth supports her arguments with facts gleaned from the internet) may be forgivable on the national punchline that is daytime TV, but when the McCain-Palin campaign recruited her to introduce the ticket at election rallies last fall, even colleague Whoopi Goldberg raised a denuded eyebrow. A personality this grating is penis repellent, no matter how immaculate the attached golden locks. — B.G. |
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8) Paris Hilton For Paris, it must be nice to always know there's at least one person who thinks she's the most beautiful girl in the room. But if she took the afternoon away from the boutiques to come roll in your hay, would you have to reposition the mirrors so she could see herself the whole time? And when you click record on your Flip cam, would she even remember that you were there? Who is the party girl when the party finally ends? One of these days, she's going to need an identity, not just an Am Ex. Still, we have to hand it to her: no one does a better job of reminding us of all the coke in coquette. — J.H. |
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7) Leonardo DiCaprio Our mama always told us to be sexy as a man, you've got to be a man. So pretty-as-a-periwinkle Leo might always have that strike against him: his babyface might scream "Snuggle!" but it hardly says "Screw!" And those 'staches he keeps sporting aren't hiding it. Scorsese can keep casting him as a tough guy, but his fine avian features and squeaky voice make it clear he's got less testosterone than Amelie Mauresmo (though then again, so probably does this writer). If he develops some genuine rough around the edges and a few chest hairs, then we'll talk. — J.H. |
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6) Jessica Alba "Skinny little Nancy Callahan. She grew up. She filled out." So went the tagline on the movie posters for Sin City, the words positioned under a hip-swerving, midriff-baring Jessica Alba. Alba had been kicking around for awhile on the syndicated The New Adventures of Flipper and then as the star of James Cameron's short-lived Fox series Dark Angel. But it was her scantily-clad turn as Nancy, the stripper with a heart of gold (is there any other kind?) that made the middling actress an international sex symbol. But if talent is sexy, lack of talent is profoundly unsexy, and Alba's appeal has fizzled as her resume has grown. A series of duds (Good Luck Chuck, The Eye, The Love Guru) garnered her an astounding five Razzie nominations in four years, each unappetizing performance driving grown-up, filled-out Nancy Callahan farther from our minds and loins. — B.G. |
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5) The Jonas Brothers If Disney knows anything, it's how to pick child stars that mature into good-looking adults, and the Jonas Brothers are no exception. So why don't they light our fire? First, and most importantly for any law-enforcement officials reading this, youngest brother Nick is literal jailbait. But Kevin and Joe turn us off too. All three are good Christian boys who wait for marriage, but they dress like the twinkiest things outside of a gay-pride parade. The painted-on jeans may make the tweens come running like cats to sexually ambiguous catnip, but the shiny veneer of lustiness slathered over their bland core leaves us cold. — J.B.R. |
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4) Jennifer Aniston Sorry, but Brad's trade-in of Jen for Angelina was probably the in-bedroom equivalent of swapping your Huffy twelve-speed for a gull-winged concept car. Jen's the girl next door in all the wrong ways. We actually think she could have gone to our high school. Wholesome and demure is nice in a lot of circumstances, but it's not what you want in a star or the sack. Plus, for many, she'll be forever linked to the orgasm face of David Schwimmer! Even if your relationship is make-believe, those are sloppy seconds you just can't live with. — J.H. |
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3) Gwyneth Paltrow We make no apologies for still liking Shakespeare in Love. The story is cute, Geoffrey Rush is awesome, and Gwyneth Paltrow's wet-eyed pluckiness is sexy as hell. (In that hot-theater-student-who-doesn't-know-she's-hot-yet kinda way, you know?) That's where we first fell for Gwyneth, but it was all downhill from there. Her career choices are one source of her great de-sexifying — Great Expectations and Bounce alone make us cringe — but the larger problem is her life choices. If you marry into Coldplay, then name your pale offspring after produce and Biblical figures, you have fatally compromised your sex appeal. GOOP only exacerbates the problem. — J.C. |
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2) Tom Cruise To be a Tinseltown stud for roughly two decades is quite the accomplishment. To ruin that seemingly overnight is damn near a mission impossible. The manic mouth behind Scientology once said that he "won't hesitate to put ethics into someone else." All things considered, wouldn't you hesitate if this handsome Hubbardite tried to put ethics — or anything else of his, for that matter — into you? — Nelson Bermudez |
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1) Nicole Kidman Unless you're buying Barbies on eBay, it isn't normal for a forty-year-old to come in mint condition. Kidman's frozen-in-time surface is the stuff of science fiction. Actually, The Twilight Zone anticipated this in the pre-Botox era: in one episode, mannequins come to life for a month every year. This Aussie automaton does the same for one film every year. Compare her on and off the set. Even Rod Serling couldn't have scripted it better. — N.B. |
