For some reason, Travel & Leisure has it in for Baltimore.
In 2011, the magazine deemed Baltimore the sixth dirtiest city in the country. In 2012, we were named the fourth worst-dressed. And now, as if to add insult to injury, T&L has decreed that Baltimoreans are among America’s least attractive people.
The most attractive cities, according to the magazine, were Miami, San Diego, and Charleston, South Carolina. The ugliest were Detroit, Memphis, and Oklahoma City. On the ugliest cities list, Baltimore ranked fourth.
We can’t entirely blame T&L editors for the rude ranking. The list was determined through a poll of the magazine’s readers– who, incidentally, also named Baltimoreans among the nation’s “quirkiest” people.
To me, rankings like this don’t really tell us much about how good looking Baltimore residents actually are. Instead, it’s more of an index of places that T&L readers don’t know much about. If they actually came here, after all, they’d see how fabulously good looking we really are (most of us, at least).
“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes to the bone.” – Dorothy Parker
“Inner beauty is really exaggerated” – a coroner.:D
Thank you for picking up one of the Softies from the Show Your Soft Side anti-cruelty campaign. Photographer Leo Howard Lubow should get a photo credit. Thanks.
I think they were being generous on the dirt issue but very harsh regarding the least attractive people.
Maybe Baltimoreans get less plastic surgery? Anyway, “beauty’ is temporary, brains, generosity, creativity… those things are forever
No, Baltimoreans are pretty ugly: badly dressed, dirty, and covered with inept ugly tattoos. It’s not that “outsiders” “don’t know what Baltimore is really like.” It’s that all of you are from Baltimore and haven’t lived anywhere else, so you’re not appalled by yourselves. Having finally escaped back to Atlanta (#5 in best-looking), I have to say the difference is immense. So much cleaner, better-looking, better-dressed, and purposeful! I’ll take “has a great job and is changing the world” over “quirky” any day. If the US was a kindergarten class, Baltimore would be the weird dirty kid in the corner eating paste. Just sayin’.