Lets us linger on Ashton Kutcher for a moment. The very young Ashton when he was a boy model in New York.

Ah, the face!

The lovely, softly inflected torso!

Now were you thinking of NOT going to the gym today? Think again, amigo. Wondering if it’s worth it to get a little nip-and-tuck repair on the old bod, the uncomely face?

Money well spent, Jack.

So says Richard Morin of the Washington Post, who reports a new study that confirms what every ugly ducking high school student knows in his bones. Ugly people commit more crimes.

Like we couldn’t see that coming!

Let’s review the basics. Long story, short:

Once upon a time Primetime, or one of those news-u-tainmentt shows, ran an experiment. Two women were stranded with flat tires. This was in the pre-cell phone age.

One was a big, cuddly blond, much like the curvy Marilyn Monroe (at right, in her early modeling days.) Well sir, men drove off the road to get to the Marilyn-esque blond, who had simply gotten out of her car and was looking worriedly at her flat!

One guy even gave her his burger and coke so she could sit on the side of the highway while he showed off his biceps and huffed and puffed to jack up her big-assed Chevy.

The other woman was a really not unattractive brunette, just a sedate gal with no obvious frontage, the kind who might casually tell you her favorite book was The Bell Jar. She had to resort to flagging down cars with quaking arms, and even then was able to hook only one samaritan who promised to notify a gas station up the road to come help her.

Face it, Beauty rules. And while we’re at it, let’s state the corollaries: Sex makes the world go round. And history, as wise historians know, is made at night.

Too Looks-ist for you? Too brainwashed by Mad Ave and the Fashion industry and our encyclopedic stash of Bel Ami videos?

Well, take a look at Richard Morin’s column today in the Washington Post The Ugly Face of Crime

“I’m too ugly to get a job.”
— Daniel Gallagher, a Miami bank robber,
after police captured him in 2003

The hapless Mr. Gallagher may have been ugly, but he was also wise.

Not only are physically unattractive teenagers likely to be stay-at-homes on prom night, they’re also more likely to grow up to be criminals, say two economists who tracked the life course of young people from high school through early adulthood.

“We find that unattractive individuals commit more crime in comparison to average-looking ones, and very attractive individuals commit less crime in comparison to those who are average-looking,” claim Naci Mocan of the University of Colorado and Erdal Tekin of Georgia State University.

Mocan and Tekin analyzed data from a federally sponsored survey of 15,000 high-schoolers who were interviewed in 1994 and again in 1996 and 2002. One question asked interviewers to rate the physical appearance of the student on a five-point scale ranging from “very attractive” to “very unattractive.”

These economists found that the long-term consequences of being young and ugly were small but consistent. Cute guys were uniformly less likely than averages would indicate to have committed seven crimes including burglary and selling drugs, while the unhandsome were consistently more likely to have broken the law.

Very attractive high school girls were less likely to commit six of the seven crimes, while those rated unattractive were more likely to have done six of seven, controlling for personal and family characteristics known to be associated with criminal behavior.

Mocan and Tekin aren’t sure why criminals tend to be ugly. Other studies have shown that unattractive men and women are less likely to be hired, and that they earn less money, than the better-looking. Such inferior circumstances may steer some to crime, Mocan and Tekin suggest. They also report that more attractive students have better grades and more polished social skills, which means they graduate with a greater chance of staying out of trouble.

Cute guys also get fucked a lot. Let’s not forger that. A happy boy is a socially productive boy. End of story.