The nation thinks we're ugly. This is not news.

For the third straight year, the readers of Travel & Leisure have rated Philadelphians to be the least attractive people in any of America's 30 biggest cities. They also found us to be surly and sedentary.

And, no surprise, we didn't make the list of the World's Sexiest Affordable Destinations that's featured in the magazine's current edition.

Over lunch the other day, my companion, The Professor, was saying this sort of survey was stupid.

"I think the definition of beauty in this country is deranged," he said. "I don't see the point of polls like that, unless it's purely recreational."

The Professor is a man of science and, to him, a tally of 60,000 votes on a Web site that caters to people with too much time and money on their hands constitutes a weak empirical measure.

An old friend of my brother's, The Professor is a favorite reality-checker. He's well-read, worldly. Though he'd scoff at the suggestion, women of a certain age find him easy on the eyes.

Had I heard, he asked, about Huntington, W. Va. (home of the 15-pound burger), picked for a visit by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver because its residents were America's fattest?

"There's a correlation between weight and perceptions of beauty," he said. "People in that place can't be better-looking than Philadelphians."

I tried to explain that Huntington was too small to be included in the survey, but The Professor wasn't moved. He was consulting his iPhone.

Skin deep

He found what he was looking for - one of those Dove Soap ads that seek to show how natural beauty is better than an airbrushed ideal.

"These are wonderful," he said. "They celebrate real beauty, not something unattainable."

Smart guy. Which brought me to our second survey.

"Would you believe," I asked him, "that the Daily Beast just assigned the Philadelphia metropolitan area an IQ of 130?" That's gifted.

"I can believe it," he said.

This was not a stupid survey. Last weekend the Beast ranked cities' braininess based on voter turnout in the last presidential election, the rate of college graduates, the presence of institutions of higher learning, and sales of nonfiction books. (Does Tucker Max count?)

And despite the city's daunting numbers of college dropouts (88,000), Philadelphia and its surroundings placed 11th out of the 55 largest metropolitan areas.

That puts us in the nation's top 3 percent of smarts. Philadelphia.

"I think intelligence is attractive," said The Professor.

While Miami won the beauty contest, Raleigh-Durham won for IQ. Miami would be fun to visit, but I'd rather live here.

A better measure

These sorts of surveys are low-hanging fruit. In the past we've been called Most Miserable, Most Depressed, Most Constipated, which might have something to do with the former two.

Like snowballs and Santa, our ugliness is an old chestnut for bloggers and Philly haters. When Travel & Leisure first listed the city last, Gawker posted this critique from a local girl who'd migrated to NYC:

"Unless you have something against snaggletoothed skinny-fat guys with sleeve tattoos and beer guts and probably some very dated piercings whose idea of making an effort is carrying around a customized messenger bag, Philadelphia is a total man mecca."

Pretty snarky stuff.

But like the drive-by surveys, it misses Philly, too. There's real beauty in this town, but it doesn't show itself right away, and it doesn't show itself to everyone. You've got to work past the edginess and the rudeness, but it's there, totally unpretentious and waiting for a little understanding.

So keep it up, Travel & Leisure. The last thing we want is all your readers moving here and driving up the prices.

Contact Daniel Rubin at 215-854-5917 or drubin@phillynews.com