THE TROUBLE WITH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN

Now right off I'm working at a disadvantage. I'm not a beautiful woman. But as a man who is genetically programmed to look at them, I do have opinions. One of them is that beautiful women are trouble...!

Wait, before the hypothesis is dismissed as ill-informed, ill-advised, or even ill-tempered, let me explain it. Historically, sociologically, and personally. The case is virtually air-tight -- well, at least that's how it played out when I presented it to the boys at the corner saloon:

* Historically, beautiful women have somehow always been at the root of trouble. Whether intentionally or not, their beauty seems to trigger all sorts of chaos throughout the centuries. Consider such infamous examples as Eve...Bathsheba...Helen of Troy....Salome....Cleopatra...Lucretia Borgia...the WWI spy mistress Mata Harri...not to mention a dazzling array of Hollywood seductresses who have kept the paparazzi busy for generations.

The hypothesis is not that feminine beauty itself is wrong (the boys at the corner saloon want to make this perfectly clear!), but that this beauty walking in a world of semi-literate males is just destined to generate trouble. In our marriages, our careers, our destinies, not to mention our dreams. The instant riposte is for the women to say: "That's your problem, not ours!" But lets face it, gals, that's like the Grand Canyon saying to the mesmerized spectators peering down: "Don't blame me for you being swept off your feet!"

* Sociologically, there is indisputable evidence that the French gendarme have it right when they say, "Cherchez la femme!" It's the classic Gallic premise that whatever the crime, first "look for the woman." It's their counter-point to the American SWAT team's, "follow the money!"

A mere un-uniformed citizen may not be able to speak with authority on this matter, but the evidence does keep coming in. For instance, the latest is from Germany were the authorities designated an 11-mile trail for the nation's nude-minded naturists. The park officials posted this sign: "If you don't want to see people with nothing on, then you should refrain from moving on." The sign is still standing, but the incidence of trouble on the trails has spiked 200%.

* Personally, I can only speak for my own testosterone. Whenever I hear Willie Nelson & Julio Inglise sing To All The Girls I've Loved Before, troubling images of boyhood frustrations, angst and torch-songs-in-the-night come crashing back into my memory lobes. OK, neither I nor the boys at the corner saloon can exactly claim the trouble was all the girls' fault. But then who else is a rejected adolescent to blame for his pain....? I mean, the vote we took over our beers was unanimous!

And so it is that perchance female beauty in our world is as much curse as crown. Of course, the final vote has yet to be tallied....then once it's in, who's to assure there won't be trouble counting the ballots?