Here’s a news flash: I’m not a fan of Pattaya. I know, hard to believe. But it’s true. You’d think that would be thanks to being exposed to the mental pathology of the city’s sexpats who live their miserable lives out on the gay Thailand message boards (which would certainly be reason enough) but my opinion is based on a singular visit to Sodom By The Sea and its bar boys. Who were all generally too young, too scrawny, too malnourished, and should have been paying me to have sex with them. It was like walking into a living UNICEF Save A Starving Child For 25 Cents A Day commercial. I’ve seen soi dogs with more sex appeal. And I never even bothered hitting Sunee Plaza where the boys really are boys.

I get that it takes all kinds, and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But personal taste in men aside, ugly is still ugly no matter how you cut it. Even in a buyer’s market where cut-rate prices rule the day, there should still be some appeal to the product. Other than young.

We’ve all experienced waking up to a hangover and to a guy we picked up at the bar the night before only to wonder if someone was pulling a practical joke. Granted many of Pattaya’s sexpats are myopic, but is it that they are also totally blind? Or is it that they are so ecstatic over scoring dick they don’t care what it’s attached to? When you are existing on a poverty line budget is scrapping the bottom of the barrel your only choice? Or in Pattaya does the look of your bank account matter more than the look of the guy you scraped enough money together to buy?

Yup, smells like science to me.

It could be that it is not so much about beauty being in the eye of the beholder, but its perception in the eye of the beer holder. Beer Goggles, the phenomenon that occurs when someone’s had a few too many alcoholic drinks and suddenly all of the Gollum look-alike bar boys who looked ragged on entering the bar look really, really appealing, might be at fault. Now scientists have shown that it’s not just a lowering of your boytoy standards – alcohol actually stimulates the part of your brain that judges facial attractiveness. It’s not him, it’s the gin.

Researchers at St. Andrews University and Glasgow University in Scotland determined that drunk people’s opinion on the attractiveness of strangers is less judgemental than those who are sober, proving the more you drink the more okay looking that bar boy becomes. They surveyed a group of 80 volunteers, having half of them drink between one and four servings of booze – depending on gender and body weight – with the other half remaining sober. Showing each group a series of pictures of strangers, the drunk volunteers rated each picture an average of 25 percent more attractive than the sober group did.

The beer goggle effect is linked to the nucleus accumbens area of your brain. It’s the area of your brain that decides how attractive that bar boy’s face is. If he is a hottie sans a few pints, your brain experiences increased neural firing. In other words, it’s stimulated. And so are you. As it turns out, alcohol, all by itself, stimulates the nucleus accumbens too. So when you’ve had a few drinks, and you look at a bar boy you may have decided was butt-ugly when you were sober, your brain – under the influence of alcohol – tells you that the little urchin is in fact somewhat attractive. And the increase in perceived attractive seems to be directly proportional to the amount of alcohol you have consumed. So drinking less can not only save you on booze costs, it can save you from waking up next to a creature whom you wouldn’t wish on LMTU. Or worse yet, waking up next to a creature that LMTU already infected.

Yup, too many bottoms up directly results in accepting the bottom of the barrel of available bar boys. In a more recent study, this one conducted by researchers at England’s Manchester University, scientists actually came up with a mathematical formula to calculate the extent of the beer goggle effect on any given individual in any given situation. They found that alcohol alone is not the only factor affecting the drunken perception of beauty. Other factors, according to their research, include:

· How brightly lit the area is, which explains why those bars are so dark;
· The observer’s eyesight quality, which explains why those with thick lenses drool over the ugliest bar boys;
· The amount of smoke in the air; which explains why bar owners don’t listen to your whining about smoking in their bar; and,
· The distance of the observer from the observed – Yup, sitting at the foot of the stage probably means you’ll be going home alone. You lucky dog.

The formula looks like this:

Which would make more sense to you if you weren’t so drunk and busy trying to not retch from looking at that hottie laying next to you who is really a nottie but looks instead like an extra from The Night of the Living Dead. Not that your sorry ass is anything to brag about either. Despite what you may think. Because the scientific world has determined that the beer goggle effect also works in reverse. The more men drink, they more likely they are to think of themselves as the next Brad Pitt.

According to a study of 4,000 people by the charity Cancer Research UK, a third of men think of themselves as more attractive when they’ve been drinking alcohol. But only one in eight of those looking at you agrees. Ouch. Maybe they need a few more drinks.

Thirty-five percent of the men studied rated themselves as more attractive after a drink or two, proving the beer goggle effect is just as disastrous for self-reflection. Worse yet, almost a quarter of men believe they’re better in bed after imbibing. But 50% of their partners say that just ain’t true. Though most bar boys hope their customers keep ordering more and more drinks. But that’s not because they think you’ll be a better lay, it’s in hope you’ll quickly pass out once the two of you are back in your room.

According to the study, 43% of men also seem to think that booze makes them funnier and better on the dance floor. But while the former may be true – drunk sexpats are always good for a laugh – all it takes is one visit to a local night club to watch the ancient sexpats shimmying their wrinkles on the dance floor to prove the latter is as delusional as the rest of their lives are. Though watching an octogenarian boogie his ass off can also be quite humorous.

Close to a third of the men participating in the research said they are more likely to get lucky when their nerves are fortified by alcohol, though in Pattaya that luck has more to do with how drunk your wallet is. And a whopping 28% of the study volunteers confessed that alcohol makes them do things they later regret. Like offing an ugly bar boy in Pattaya.

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