The DUFF: Story Behind How Your 'Designated Ugly Fat Friend' Make You Look Attractive

If you ever watched the Mae Whitman and Robbie Amell rom-com about the Designated Ugly Fat Friend, you would have scoffed at the thought of having an "ugly one" in your friend group. After all, birds of the same feather flock together, and that means there's nobody in your circle who's uglier or prettier - you are a whole package, after all.

However, it seems that science agrees with the philosophy of the book-turned-film: if you want someone to pick you up at the bar or ask you for a date, just stand next to your "uglier" friend. A recent study reported that people are perceived as more attractive when they are surrounded by less fortunate-looking friends.

To prove such phenomenon, the study's 40 participants rated the attractiveness of different faces in photos. However, when the researchers threw them on a loop with an unattractive "distractor face," the participants re-evaluated the initial photos in a more favorable manner.

New York Daily News noted that the study's author, Nicholas Furl of Royal Holloway, University of London, said in a statement that "Rightly or wrongly, the way people look has a profound impact on the way others perceive them." While it has been understood that the level of attractiveness of a person is generally steady, the company we keep does seem to have an effect on how attractive others find us.

Besides, throwing the "distractor face" not only makes participants reevaluate attractiveness, they also became more discerning when looking at two attractive faces, even noting their various differences.

There's a catch, though. As Elite Daily pointed out, the "ugly friend effect" will only work when there is a clearly more attractive person in the group - so if there's a few unattractive people and a few unattractive ones, people will still have to be more critical.

We can't all be models and goddesses, so we might as well flaunt what we have - DUFF or no DUFF.