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1. Do you agree with the author of the article? Why?
2. What is your opinion of the dating website described in the article? (4 zdania)

BEAUTIFULPEOPLE.NET is a dating website. To join you have to send in a photo of yourself along with a profile describing what kind of person you are. Then after you have joined, you make contact with other members in the hope of starting a loving relationship.

But Beautifulpeople.net is different from other dating websites. It’s an online club with a very exclusive membership: it only accepts beautiful people. Once you have sent in your picture and personal description, you then have to wait for three days to see if you’re ‘beautiful’ enough to become a member. During this time other club members study your profile and decide if you can join or not. However, only ‘beautiful people’ of the opposite sex can judge you. If they think you’re really good-looking, they vote to allow you to become another ‘beautiful person’. But if they don’t find you attractive, they may send you rude messages criticising your appearance. Many people try to join, but only one in twenty is successful.

Groucho Marx once said, ‘I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member’. That’s funny, but there’s nothing funny about Beautifulpeople.net. I would refuse to even try to join such a worthless organisation. It uses a cruel, arrogant system that can make good people feel frustrated, lonely and insecure. It sells the sad idea that appearance is more important than personality; that it is more important to have perfect teeth, a smooth complexion or a sexy body than it is to have a lively personality or to be friendly, easy-going or generous.

This idea, of course, is not restricted to Beautifulpeople.net. Last weekend, I went to a new club with some friends. I was wearing a short denim skirt, a sleeveless silk top and high heels and they let me go in. But they told my friend Debbie she couldn’t enter. Why not? Maybe it was because she was wearing some baggy jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of old trainers or maybe they didn’t think she was pretty enough. Debbie’s a cheerful outgoing girl with a great sense of humour, but at that moment she felt miserable and depressed and started crying. And that is how the thousands of people who are rejected by Beautifulpeople.net must feel.

Personally, I can’t stand people who look down on others just because of their appearance. I find them narrow-minded and intolerant. So I have a suggestion for the people who run Beautifulpeople.net. Why don’t you change the name of your dating website to Uglyminds.net?