Some of us do not need the assistance of beautifulpeople.com to let us know whether we are gorgeous.
Not for us the demeaning process of posting a profile and pic on the website for beautiful members of the opposite sex to vote for (or not).
We are told the social networking site has turfed off 5000 wannabe beauties across the world since Christmas supposedly because of their new chubbiness.
Unless the site requires naked photos, how do they know who has let themselves go? Perhaps you can see the turkey stuffing bulging in the applicants' cheeks and the Christmas pud resting in a New Year triple-chin necklace.
In any case, how can you truly be beautiful one minute and not the next? I don't need to ask such questions because I have sisters and we can be ugly.
Ardent readers will remember the wanton destruction of my harmless (if ludicrous) fantasy when I donned a sunhat one summer and suggested a resemblance to Audrey Hepburn.
Fortunately, this summer's weather has been such I have hardly had to re-live that slight.
The sister responsible did not escape, however.
She must endure her expensive perfume being called flyspray and her elaborate make-up procedure dubbed putting on her "baboon's bottom" (yes, one sister had seen one too many wildlife programmes).
As for concerns about festive flab, we happily compare handfuls of it and then do the only sensible thing - have another cup of tea and a decent slab of Christmas cake.
The views members of the opposite sex might hold about our attractiveness could not be as cutting as those we share.
I'm not sure if Northern Ireland MP and Castlereagh councillor Iris Robinson has sisters among her five siblings, but if she does, then perhaps some down-to-earth advice might have stopped her foolishness.
Mrs Robinson, now 60, married since 20 to Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party leader and First Minister Peter, has hit the headlines over her affair with the 19-year-old son of her late butcher.
News reports suggest that Mrs Robinson offered to look after Kirk McCambley, after father Billy's death, but her role as comforter soon extended to having sex with the teenager.
Why did this God-bothering fundamentalist Christian mother of three grown-up children, known for her outrageously ignorant and offensive anti-gay views, succumb to old-fashioned lust at the age of 58?
As someone who might have qualified for a spot on beautifulpeople.com once, did she feel her star beginning to fade?
Had she gasped at a glimpse of her neck in the reflection of an automatic teller machine when withdrawing some of the more than half a million quid she and hubby raked in from the public purse in the 2007-08 year (something which earned them the title of Swish Family Robinson)?
Wise women know such a vision is no reflection, but a picture of a turkey.
Did she fancy herself as Mrs Robinson from the film The Graduate in much the same way I thought of Audrey?
Since her favourite film is Gone With the Wind, did she think young Kirk's knees would last the distance better than Peter's in any carrying upstairs re-enactments?
Predictably, it ended in tears, and more are likely over questions surrounding Mrs Robinson organising developers to fund Kirk into his own café and whether there was any impropriety involved.
It is still not clear where the money went after she romantically demanded it back once the affair was over.
Mrs Robinson, who apparently attempted suicide after the news of the summer fling reached her family last March, has now resigned and gone into hiding, and her husband, who is making noises about standing by his woman, also finds his career in jeopardy over the money issues.
In a statement, Mrs Robinson described the affair as the worst thing she had ever done and that it had no emotional or lasting meaning.
She referred to severe bouts of depression which altered her mood and personality, but also said she did not want to dilute the blame or resist taking full responsibility for her actions.
And while she said sorry to family and friends, there was curiously no direct apology to Kirk, now 21.
What is he to make of all this? Did he deserve to be thrown into the limelight in this way?
It might be good for the health of his fledgling business having rubber-neckers thronging there and journalists buying the odd coffee while they fruitlessly seek comment, but what about his mental health?
The ugly sisters would have had strong views on all these things, I am sure.
Mrs Robinson might not have wanted to hear them, of course, but the tea and cake might have provided a little comfort.
Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
