Beer Goggles Are No Longer an Excuse

wine goggles neither.

But she looked older!

It may have sounded like a good excuse in the past, but now men won't be able to say that alcohol impaired their perception of a woman's age. According to a new study, the booze has minimal effect.

Researchers went to bars and cafes and asked 240 men, half of whom received breathalyzer tests to confirm they'd been drinking, to look at pictures of ten women, aged 17, and rate their attractiveness. Several of the pictures had been doctored to make the subject look older or like they were wearing makeup.

What the study found was that the men routinely overestimated the ages of the women by almost four years, and that despite what we usually assume, "alcohol and make-up did not inflate attractiveness ratings."

This obviously has huge consequences for cases of underage sex, as the research will be used in determining if a man truly was unable to determine the girl's age.

But the study also had some more light-hearted results.

"Another interesting finding," they said, "was that, overall, participants who drank alcohol actually rated all the women in the photos as less attractive, compared with the participants who had not drunk alcohol. This seemingly flies in the face of the commonly held notion of 'beer goggles.'"

All I can say is frat houses and office Christmas parties will never be the same now that even Mr. Scientist has said you can't use alcohol as an excuse anymore. Yes, the world has become a strange place. Sanity and Sobriety, here we come.