My latest excuse...I'm not beautiful enough to dunk.

So it turns out I have another factor to put on my list of reasons why my dunking may be a very hard challenge to accomplish.  I already had the following three listed....

1. I'm old = 37 going on 38
2. I'm white = old stereotype
3. I'm lazy = enough said
4. Here is the new one....I'm not beautiful.

Turns out I neglected the fact that I am not "beautiful".  There is a theory that people are better athletes when they have body symmetry.  To borrow from one of our geometry classes, symmetry is when you take an object and it is identical on either sides of an axis.  People with balanced body symmetry are considered to be more beautiful becuase their features are balanced and proportional.

A couple of years ago there was a TV documentary and articles in magazines like Sports Illustrated that covered this topic.  In short here is what they said....

"In The Learning Channel's four-hour special The Human Face, biologist John Manning of the University of Liverpool contends that there's a link between facial beauty and athletic ability. Manning, who says that "people rate symmetric faces as being more attractive than asymmetric faces," performed tests that found runners with asymmetric ears to be slower than those with symmetric ears. Why might this be so? Manning argues that facial symmetry reflects symmetry in the body: A visage mat's off by as little as a millimeter from one side to the other—the left eye slightly lower or smaller than the right eye, for instance—can signal a similar shortfall in coordination and speed." (Green Morse, 2001)

So let's take a popular and beautiful athlete such as NFL quarterback Tom Brady (the guy is in GQ and married to a supermodel).  Here is what he looks like compared with myself using facial symmetry....I'm hosed!  The repeat of the left side of my face looks like an ogre.  The left side turns into a pencil necked geek.  Tom on the other hand stays pretty handsome throughout. 

So now if I fall short of my dunking dream I blame my lack of beauty.  It's a cold cruel world...but somehow I will perservere.

Green Morse, K. (2001, September 03). Face facts. Sports Illustrated, Retrieved from http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com
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