The sunlight could be helping this couple increase their crow’s feet, which would make them attractive to people in Vermont, according to a recent survey. (123rf)

A journalist’s email inbox is an often interesting place. My favorite emails are the ones where some hapless salesperson is trying to sell tech and security stuff and has emailed me because somebody somewhere once put me down on a widely distributed sales list as, get this, the company’s Chief Technology Officer. It’s a good joke, one that’s been landing messages in my email and occasionally my voicemail for about 15 years. The irony is pretty great, because if there’s a bigger Luddite than myself working at a computer five days a week, they have my sympathies. 

But my second favorite are the random surveys and studies that some corporation or another has commissioned and thoughtfully emailed me. I for the most part ignore them, but every once in a while one permeates the membrane. Take, for instance, the press release I received last week highlighting a survey by lens.me, which quizzed 3,014 men and women nationally about which unconventional traits secretly pull at their heartstrings. 

That is a subject I’d have never thought to look into, personally, but then I’m not an online retailer of colored contact lenses, which is what Lens.me is. And among the things I learned from receiving their email about the study is that there is such a thing as an online colored contact lens retailer. 

So to recap, a company that makes fake, I mean, cosmetic eye parts made inquiries into over 3,000 people’s body and personality-related fetishes, which makes as much sense as anything does in the year 2025. 

But at least the survey is real, and it found that voices are at the top of the unconventional traits  Oregonians and Washingtonians are into: “Not the words themselves, but the tone — that steady, resonant quality that feels grounded and calm,” read the email. “Locals say they’re drawn to voices that carry a certain quiet confidence, whether it’s a low, gravelly timbre or a warm, easy cadence. In the Beaver State, the right voice doesn’t need to shout — it simply needs to feel real, reassuring and unforced.” 

My sincere condolences to loud talkers. While I am pretty sure I land in neither camp, judging from how often in our 29-year marriage my wife has asked me to repeat things in a kinder tone, my own voice could use a little work toward being lower on the jerkishness register.

Just behind a groovy tone of voice, Oregonians liked eyebrows: “Many Oregonians are captivated not just by grooming but by the expressive power of brows — the way they arch in surprise, furrow in thought or lift in amusement. If eyes are windows to the soul, eyebrows are definitely the running commentary.” 

Did a colored lens company really just miss the opportunity to call eyebrows the color commentary? At any rate, right behind eyebrows are those handy things we call hands, all of which I have, so I have that going for me should I, due to overuse of my grumpy tone of voice, ever find myself trying to be attractive. Just remind me to keep my mouth shut.

Around the U.S., survey respondents offered further proof there’s no accounting for taste, judging by the map of attractive traits the surveyors made. In Florida, New York and California, “facial expressions” topped the list of attractive traits. What I read about the survey didn’t specify what kind of expressions people like. Judging by the fact that we’re talking about three of the most heavily botoxed, cosmetically enhanced states, they probably just like it when a person can make any kind of facial expression.

According to the survey results, Virginians and Kentuckians are all about a person’s scent. Vermonters say the most attractive trait in a potential partner is their crow’s feet, and in New Jersey it’s eye shape or a person’s gaze. 

The surveyors also asked people what subtle things they notice in a potential suitor around the U.S., and 26% said it’s eye contact and facial expressions and 16% said voice.

Even when asked about what subtle things they’re into, 22% of respondents still said they notice body or face first, “suggesting that while subtlety is powerful, old habits die hard,” the surveyors wrote. Yep, either that or 22% of those surveyed don’t know that faces and bodies are not exactly subtle things about a person. Maybe they just didn’t know what the word subtle means.

I’ll tell you what though, if you squint hard enough, everyone has a pretty nice face and body. Just be careful if you do this around Vermonters — they may see your crow’s feet and think you’re flirting with them.

There was one more thing I just had to know from Lens.me, the maker of colored contact lenses, so I emailed back the sender of the press release and asked, “I’m curious if people mentioned eye color, although I guess that wouldn’t necessarily land under subtle or unusual.”

“Eye color wasn’t cited by respondents,” came the reply. 

I don’t know about you, but if I made colored eye contact lenses and people taking my survey on attractiveness didn’t mention eye color, I’d be so mad I’d be seeing red and my voice would get ugly.