Hey Baby… You Sure Got a Purdy Mouth

If you use an online dating service, but aren’t having any luck luring in the ladies, you might want to try this line the next time you’re trolling profiles and trying to start up instant message conversations with random girls: “You have beautiful lips.” Frankly, we think it comes across as creepy, but that’s because our mind took up permanent residence, bought property and became a slum landlord in the gutter a long time ago. Apparently, as long as the girl you’re hitting on doesn’t presume that you’re referring to her lady-bits, telling her she has beautiful lips is the compliment most likely to elicit a response from her in an online chat, according to a new study.

The survey, which analyzed nearly 200,000 online flirtations in 11 different languages conducted among the 87 million worldwide users of the dating site Badoo.com, gauged womens’ responses to 12 different compliments on their physical appearance. If the compliment initiated an exchange, the pickup line was considered successful. The longer the exchange went on, the higher the pickup line ranked on the scale of success. “You have beautiful lips” had the highest success rate overall among all the different nationalities of women.

Experts say that the lip-line works because women dig it when guys are assertive and personal. But let’s face it—women through the ages have been fixated on their lips, and the trend only continues today. Turn on the TV and all you see are women who have clearly pumped their kissers full of weird shit in an effort to fatten them up. A lot of women really want a set of plump Angelina Jolie-lips—even if it means looking more alien-fish than Lara Croft.

Besides, some of the other pickup lines that were tested were just plain bizarre. For example, one was, “You have beautiful ears.” Most women would likely type, “Okaaaaaay…. um, thanks?” or, “Go away, freak!” if a chat window with that line in it popped up on their screen—well, unless that woman is either Dutch or Portuguese, because that was actually the one that worked best among those two nationalities. (Now all you ear fetishists know where to go for your next vacation.) “You have nice legs” was the big winner among Brits, and Canadian and German women liked to be told that they had nice skin. “You dress beautifully,” was also a hit among American, French, Italian and Brazilian women.

In the end, this study reminds us of something stated by that sage among men, Chris Rock: “Women need three things to survive—food, water and compliments.” Whether you’re telling a girl that she has nice lips, nice ears or really enthralling kneecaps, the point is, flattery will get you everywhere.