Us Brits consider ourselves a nation of 5/10s

It’s a horrible question isn’t it, ‘how physically attractive do you think you are?’

It’s bad enough when it’s other people rating you, but it’s somehow worse when you have to do it. Rate yourself too high and you risk being thought of as arrogant, rate yourself too low and you’ll be one of those people who claims they’ve done ‘no revision at all!’ for an exam when in fact they’ve been living in the library for a month.

Or, at least, this is how I, and majority of the great British public see things, according to new research from YouGov, which reveals that, overwhelmingly, Brits are likely to rate themselves the most average level of attractiveness possible: a solid 5/10. 

One suspects that if they’d asked Americans, they may well have received a very different response.

Fully 40% of respondents rated themselves a ‘5’, with 13% plumping for a confident ‘7’, 12% opting for ‘6’, then the next most popular answer (7%) being a rather meek ‘4’.

Really, even though it’s the obviously the middle, most average score, ‘5’ is pretty low isn’t it. No one, even those not so blessed in the looks department as others, could be blamed for giving themselves a ‘7’. That’s not showing off, you’re not saying you’re the best, you’re just saying you’re decent. 

But no, either because we’re British, or because as a nation we have extremely low self-esteem and crippling self-worth issues - or probably both actually - we’ve given ourselves a collective ‘5’. I’m not sure whether to feel proud or a bit sad. Again, much like being British in general.

As if to back up this view, it also transpires that most Brits believe that their partners are more attractive than they are.

Everyone scoring themselves a ‘7’ or below believes that their partner is superior in looks to them and it’s even a close race with ‘8’s.

This is actually quite nice when you think about it - we all think we’ve done better than might have been expected; we’re all batting above our average, so perhaps that means we’re all pretty happy.

In a third finding, it was found that only 12% of people would actually want a 10/10 partner.

In detail, ‘0’ to ‘3’s were most keen to hook up with a ‘5’ (hey, may as well shoot for the stars), ‘4’s dared to dream for a ‘6’, ‘5’s were perfectly happy in their own score-bracket, ‘6’s and ‘7’s were keen to upgrade one notch, while ‘8’s, ‘9’s and ‘10’s all wanted to keep it in-house.

Which pretty much shows the complete lack of ambition associated with being British. Again, I feel both proud and sad.

Maybe we should play this on loudspeakers across the land for a few weeks.

(Images: New Line Cinema/YouGov)