Fact-Checking Yale’s 50 Most Beautiful
It's Thursday night, you've once again been sexed in by your roommate (walk-through doubles are baaad news), and you've got a good hour to kill. Here's a project for you. Pour yourself a scotch and sink into the online archives of Rumpus, Yale's inimitable tabloid, which we are completely derelict in not covering a lot more. Part trashy gossip, part genius prose, Rumpus lies at the intersection of two highways that don't meet often enough. What they lack in substance, they make up for in complete disdain for anyone who considers substance a requirement for college journalism. Aleksey Vayner? They slammed him first, in like 2002. Dr. Susan Block? Same. We're pretty sure it's run by a group of self-absorbed fuck-ups, but what great publication isn't? Rumpus's primary flaw is that it doesn't publish often enough.
With that preamble, we feel comfortable piggybacking on their proudest (only?) tradition: Yale's 50 Most Beautiful People [PDF], the 2007 edition of which is out now. Every year, Rumpus turns its already astonishing superficiality up a notch and dolls up a few dozen passable-to-smoking students for the noblest of purposes: to stoke Yale's collective fantasy furnace.
But last Friday, on the eve of our journey, while compiling our initial draft on this, we found ourselves in an unprecedented schism -- at each other's throats over blonde vs. brunette, decolletege vs. prim, bulging obliques vs lattimus dorsi. With intra-IvyGate strife threatening to rend the blog in twain, we tabled discussion. No hot-or-not civil war would divide and conquer us. Besides, as every Facebook airbrusher knows, the camera lies. We investigated, and these people are not worth the infighting. So we're calling this issue of Rumpus out for the Photoshopped fiction that it is: it's time to fact-check Yale's alleged 50 Most Beautiful People.
Upon inspecting their Facebook photo records, the women acquitted themselves quite well. But to paraphrase Derek, the male models are really, really, ridiculously ... ridiculous-looking. Rumpus has a cute tradition of always referring to Yale's paper as the Yale Daily "News," even abbreviating it YD"N." Well, we're starting our own little tradition here. After the jump, enjoy our fact-checking of Yale's M"B"P ...
Originals are the black and whites, new improved Facebook pics in color.
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March 1st, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Good call on us being fuck-ups, although there might be a few of us who aren’t self-absorbed (maybe). While I don’t know if the pictures were photoshopped, I’m pretty sure we’re all generally too drunk/high to airbrush very well.
March 1st, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Toolboxes,
Only ugly people put flattering pics of themselves on Facebook. You’re not supposed to take it that seriously. Can I have the Asian guy’s number?
March 1st, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Sorry Kate. He’s gay. And good job IvyGate for pointing out the obvious: people look different when they’re posing for photos at a party or with friends than they do when they’re posing for a magazine. Brilliant deduction! It’s still better than the “news” the YD”N” has been coming up with lately though
March 1st, 2007 at 6:29 pm
What the hell is up with Yale thinking the gay, feminine, weak look is hot?!! Except for the black guy, all those guys look like pansies!
March 1st, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Yeah, Kate, that Asian guy drips gayness. And read the pdf file. It’s pretty telling about all of them.
All in all, this thing sucks. It’s like a glorified facebook profile.
March 1st, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Hey. I dated this really hot asian girl who was one of the top 50… and she was as hot in the mag as in her fbook photos as in my bed. either way, yalies are dildos.
March 1st, 2007 at 7:24 pm
What’s wrong with dripping gayness? I’d rather drip gayness than mediocrity–I’m talking to you, Brown! And “Kate”, you must be out of double-A’s for your Rabbit. Don’t forget to pick up some on your way back to Glover Park. I know it’s tough that there is a group of men who would rather not even contemplate your smelly chotch, let alone lick it, but gay bashing is not the answer. F*ing homophobes. And that first guy is SMOKING.
March 1st, 2007 at 7:41 pm
HOLY SHIT I went to high school with the 5th guy he was on the swim team.
March 1st, 2007 at 8:20 pm
“What the hell is up with Yale thinking the gay, feminine, weak look is hot?!! Except for the black guy, all those guys look like pansies!”
The black guy looks like a gay prostitute.
Not that there is anything wrong with that.
March 1st, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Sorry you couldn’t be more, “Brown”. I’m sure you’re a really cool, hilarious person who drips heterosexuality and could have made the most amazing publication ever out of this issue. Get over yourself
March 1st, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Sorry you couldn’t be more entertained, “Brown”. I’m sure you’re a really cool, hilarious person who drips heterosexuality and could have made the most amazing publication ever out of this issue. Get over yourself
March 2nd, 2007 at 12:27 am
THESE ARE THE MOST WEAK LOOKING PANSIES WHO ARE PROBABLY GAY PROSTITUTES THAT I HAVE EVER SEEN.
not that there’s anything wrong with that.
March 2nd, 2007 at 1:11 am
decolletege? Maybe you should check your spelling….ooh, and yeah, good article. Facebook pictures are definitely always fair game ;).
March 2nd, 2007 at 2:13 am
50 most is really such a random grab bag of people. it’s kinda generally just people who know people in rumpus or have connections, not really those who “deserve” to be in it. take it more as a joke than as a serious, fact-driven analysis of yale.
March 2nd, 2007 at 2:21 am
I don’t know, I wonder if some of those writers are secretly catty and use an overly fawning tone to show these “beautiful people” as tools/douchebags — I KNOW this is the Ivy League, but dropping the fact that you have a maid or that you’re too cool for Nantucket is kind of tacky. Not that these people are bad-looking, but I think I’d be more attracted to the people who were approached for this piece and had the good sense to turn down this chance of an ego boost.
March 2nd, 2007 at 2:51 am
it could well be that the reason the 50 Most guys all look gay, even though most of them aren’t (and seriously, ivygate, the girls all look like EVERY OTHER GIRL AT YALE, so boring) is because they were basically picked by one gay guy at rumpus who chose his crushes.
March 2nd, 2007 at 3:55 am
NOH IT IS B/C EVRY BOI @ YALE IS GAYZORZ ROFL.
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:41 am
Where’s the photo of Elizabeth Wurtzel then? She’s bound to be in there? What no! A travesty!
p.s – anyone got a link to the Wurtzel face book photo?
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:41 am
@ Yale ‘04: Two different Kates, idiot. One who likes black dudes, one, apparently, who likes teh gay. Sorry you went to Yale!
March 2nd, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Actually, I thought the girls were especially bad this year. But girls (especially girls who are concerned enough with how they look to attract the attention of the boys at Rumpus) tend to put better looking pictures up on facebook than do boys.
Anyway, the BP issue has been going way downhill in the past two to three years. I could put together a better list with my eyes closed.
March 2nd, 2007 at 12:58 pm
i think this is a great idea, ivygate– facebook pics vs. glamor shots. it’s clearly all in good fun, and i don’t think ivygate is trying to say these people are actually ugly because they have a few seriously weirdo pictures on facebook, kate #1.
i love the unabashed hostility that anonymity provides.
March 2nd, 2007 at 2:18 pm
the funny thing about the “50 most beautiful people” at yale is just that — they have to go to yale. really, take a look at everyone on the covers again. these people are attractive, sure, but Beautiful? get yer eyes checked!
y08 and hmm speak the truth. most of the beautiful people i knew at yale declined their invitations.
as for the girl whining about femme-looking beauty queens in the 50-most, go find yourself a beautiful testosterone-cake at a state school and have subliterate children. modern men have more repressed masculinity than you can imagine, just dying to be expressed. blame our parents’ feminism for your inability to recognize true maleness. if we can appreciate your overbearing, intellectual, aggressive femininity, then you can learn to appreciate our “feminine” and “weak” masculinity.
March 2nd, 2007 at 3:16 pm
uh only a couple of those girls were actually hot. and I went to D, where standards go to die.
March 2nd, 2007 at 4:20 pm
STUPID STUPID GAYS DRIPPING WITH GAYNESS LIKE THEY WENT SWIMMING IN A POOL OF GAY OVER THE SUMMER ON FIRE ISLAND
March 2nd, 2007 at 5:57 pm
yale people are generally not beautiful. it is because they are smart and go to ivy league schools.
although there are definitely a few that sneak through.
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:28 pm
If this is the best they have to offer of the male student body?Shoot me now please.Looking like you shoot up”and they prolly do”lol..isnt sexy.Then again maybe im just spoiled.lol
March 3rd, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Clearly, you gay bashing people are not aware of gay ‘bears’. Not that Yale has any I know of, but still.
March 3rd, 2007 at 11:12 pm
“not aware of gay bears.” h’alum, did anyone say all gays were skinny, weak, pansies? nobody’s talking about bears because they’re not in this publication, obvi.
March 5th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
hay every1 look i’m criticizing 50 most
i must take myself very seriously
March 6th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Point of etiquette: Is it okay to call Yalies Yalies? Or does nobody who is anybody do that? What do Yalies call themselves? The photos provide plenty of data with which to ponder: Are Yale-schooled individuals superhuman or merely human? Sub we seriously doubt.
March 8th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
AJ will attend YALE 2014. He sleeps with the llamas.
March 9th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Where are the broads?
March 9th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
wtf? why are we only making fun of the guys here? i’m sure the bitches were annoying as fuck on facebook too.
March 16th, 2007 at 5:01 am
In the fall of 93, when we started with the BPs- Rumpus was a year old. Nothing like it existed- anywhere. We weren’t quite sure whether people would take it seriously. We were accused of causing eating disorders. The people we picked were essentially chosen at random- people who were good enough, but certainly not the best.
We knew the concept made it when people put it on their freaking resumes and sent their “achievements” home to their local newspapers.
Rumpus has always been about making controversy, not just reporting it. A first principle of the Rumpus brand of journalism.
March 16th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Honestly, who doesn’t have at least a couple unflattering photographs of themselves? The people in this issue are good-looking in real life (especially by Yale standards…), and no one actually takes this issue THAT seriously…its just kind of a silly, funny thing that’s not worth hating on.
March 16th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Not worth hating on? Man, you must think you’re reading a book or something. Vehement and seemingly inexplicable hating is what the internet is *about*. Get with it.
Anyway, that Michelle girl is smoking. Do you think she likes Anonymous Emailers who post at ivygate and tell shit like it be being? Compared to what else she’s got available?
August 10th, 2007 at 8:24 am
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