“I wanted to have a threesome with two less than ideal ladies and my girlfriend said, ‘Dude, two 5s don’t make a 10.’”

My informant read this on an online joke forum, and has since repeated it to many friends. She tells the joke either when the group is sharing jokes, or when she disagrees about how attractive one of her friends thinks someone else is. She will only tell the joke in front of peers, and only peers whom she thinks are intelligent.

As a student majoring mathematics, my informant believes that the joke is funny because it defies our ideas about basic mathematical concepts. She finds humor in the irony.

While I agree with my informant that the joke is funny because it contradicts a recognized truth, I believe this joke also points to a specific perspective on beauty. Physical attractiveness is generally a qualitative attribute; different people find different characteristics attractive for a wide array of reasons, usually determined by cultural perspectives on beauty. Yet, many students across American, in high schools and Universities, describe members of the opposite sex as physically attractive on a scale from one to ten, with ten being the most attractive. These young adults often decide whom to interact with sexually based on where the other person lies on the attractiveness scale. Students earn more bragging rights the higher their sexual partner is on this scale. This practice, portrayed humorously in this joke, turns beauty into an attribute that can be described quantitatively, instead of qualitatively. I believe the joke is humorous to my informant’s friends because by contradicting basic mathematics it points out the ridiculousness of viewing beauty quantitatively.