The Prettiest chess player!

Sure.  Why paint a picture that is disturbing when we could all argue the point in vague euphemisms that make the practice seem almost palatable ;)...

If the comparisons bother you, maybe it's because you know it's wrong, and are clinging to the "well, gee, it's only a little bit wrong" defense too hard.  Violation is violation...it's only a matter of the degree.

At least we got 3 good pages before the white knights came in and derailed the thread.  

I personally don't have any fantasies about physically attacking women and yelling in their ears, forcing them to "check out this babe" against their wills, while, as you called it, "circle-jerking" with the "unbelievably rude" people of this thread. I'm not much into condemning people either, especially not for things I consider harmless.

There's always a thin line between what's OK and what is not. Kosteniuk sells photos of "pretty colleagues" and invites you to rank them on her web site, where the numbers are published: "Look Ma, I was voted the least pretty player in the Russian team!" I find that type of ranking of colleagues somewhat dubious. Some things in this type of threads are of course also a bit dubious, but I only know where I draw the line myself, and I'm not bothered if someone posts a photo from for example Chessbase calling a woman (or man) good looking.

Actually, a few posts here insinuated if not flat out stated that Ivanchuk is pretty ;low down on the 'looks' scale. But nobody takes up the sword in his defense, although this is clearly much more insulting than calling a girl pretty.

But damn!, he is ugly....

Nice cherry-picking ;)...but I believe we've reached our impasse.

You admit its "dubious", but you're okay with it.  Got it.

There are many threads of this sort that easily can get dubious, if they reach the level some of the moralist critics repeatedly suggested here, where it all should be only connected to approximately "let's vote for best body if you are all so obsessed with sex", "why not post private photos of your nieces" etc. But here, nah, not so much of that.

As for Ivanchuk, maybe he just got a bit more eccentric not only regarding his looks over the years.

I like Antoaneta Stefanova.

I also like Viktorija Čmilytė.

And Tatiana Kosintseva.

yea the ****bags here really know how to mount an offensive, when they saw they were being attacked they pretended to 'level' the playing field by posting pictures of men, but it was backhanded compliment, and they posted Ivanchuk. 

Who are these people you call "****bags"?

Pics or STFU.

 people posting and insulting Ivanchuk!

OK, just wanted to make sure :-)

The man does have his fans:

haha perverts

just kidding