Professional Health Blog

Reader, let me first ask you this - in your many travels around the country, have you ever noticed how people in certain cities seem ‘hotter’ than those in others? Simply put, “hotflation” is that phenomenon that can be loosely described as “looks inflation.”

Perhaps ‘hotflation’ is best described with an example - one that should be familiar to anyone who has lived in larger cities. Let’s say there’s a beautiful girl (you could replace everything that follows with ‘guy’ - it’s the same story) in, say, a small town in South Dakota. She is generally considered the hottest girl in town - prom queen, head cheerleader, you name it. Now, since it’s a small town, there may not be that many other girls out there to begin with, so this hot girl really has no competition. In addition, it may be a town that, for whatever reason, is generally not known for having attractive people. Or some other factors may be at work. But whatever the reason, our ‘hot’ girl isn’t typically aware of such outside factors, and generally begins to believe that she is truly uniquely gorgeous.

One day, our beauty decides to move to, I don’t know, say New York, to pursue a modeling career (since so many people back home told her she could be one - mostly guys trying to get lucky, of course). She may be pretty, even in New York, but odds are that she will soon come to realize that there are MANY other girls out there as beautiful or even more beautiful than she, and that she will likely need more than her looks to succeed. Simply stated, our ‘perfect 10′ in South Dakota has been reduced to maybe a ‘7′ (or even less) in New York. Her score back home in the land of the buffalo is a classic example of ‘hotflation’ - in her little hometown, she gets more attention and kudos for her looks than she would in a place with hotter women, i.e., a place with more competition (see, I knew that Econ degree would prove useful!). Competition drives down her ‘hotness’ in a place like New York, while back home she remains the object of every guy’s lust.

Of course, none of this means that our girl is ISN’T hot or attractive. She is! It just means that her location - where she’s from - her peer group there, local competition from other attractive women, etc. should be taken into account in determining her relative hotness on a grander scale. Everything is relative, after all - and so is hotness.

Now, we could flip the example a bit and tell the same story. Suppose you have an average-looking guy who’s living in Los Angeles, which is full of good-looking dudes (as much as I hate to admit that, trust me, it’s true). He could be the nicest guy ever, or rich or whatever, but when it comes to looks, in LA he is simply average. Now put that guy in Kansas, or Vermont. What happens? Does our average LA guy now become a ‘hottie’ to the ladies of Montpelier? Or is it something in the look of the local guys that makes our average LA guy actually below average in one of those other places?

The point is that looks, ‘hotness,’ attractiveness - whatever you want to call it - is a relative phenomenon that varies greatly depending on context. If that context is geography, well, let’s face it, geography matters. You don’t move to the mountains of Colorado if you hate snow, and you don’t live in Michigan if tornadoes terrify you. The same is true for attractiveness. For whatever reason, certain places in the United States, like Los Angeles, Miami, New York, certain parts of the Southwest and the Southeast, are just known for having hotter people. At least that’s what I always thought.

But are the stereotypes true? Are some places in the country inherently ‘hotter’ than others? By moving to such a place, do you increase your chances of landing a hottie? Or are you inherently worse off for moving to an area with greater competition among your own sex for the attention of the opposite sex? And might you be better off simply staying where you’re from? And what if you have NO IDEA???

‘Hotflation’ it seems, generates more questions than answers. But the phenomenon certainly exists, and should be an important consideration in determining one’s relative ‘hotness.’

For more info on the ‘hotflation’ phenomenon, including a chance to find out where YOU are hot, check out www.hotflation.com