Walter Pierce

Bayou State flashes snaggletooth smile

by Walter Pierce

Once again, all together now, a hale hooray for Mississippi. Our neighbor state continues to make Louisiana look good in national rankings, this time in The Daily Beast’s “Best Looking States.” Sportsman’s Paradise, it turns out, aint’ exactly Hottie Central, coming in at No. 42 out of 51. (The District of Columbia is included and, coincidentally, ranks No. 1.)

Depending on how you look at it, Louisiana is the 42nd best looking state or the 10th ugliest — not pretty by an measure. But take heart, the Magnolia State gets a 49 ranking, followed by the Dakotas, South and North respectively. Rounding out the top three, after D.C., are Hawaii and California. We may not be the prettiest state, but as another recent ranking suggests, we are the happiest.

The Beast ranked states by three criteria:

First, we determined who had the most stunners-per-capita (allowing Connecticut and California an equal playing field), tallying the hometowns of more than 300 male and female fashion models, plus 125 men mentioned in ten years’ worth of People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” issues. Then, we accounted for the results of the Miss America and Miss USA pageants for the past decade. Finally, in order to measure general attractiveness, we factored in health and fitness data for each state from 2006-2008, ranked by the Trust for America’s Health. Each of those three criteria—models, pageant winners, fitness—was weighed equally, with any ties broken by which state performed best in the latter category.