Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky Are Bad Match, Says Dating Site

July 29, 2010— -- Chelsea Clinton emerged self-consciously into the public eye at the age of 12 with frizzy hair and braces.

But this weekend, the now-stunning and confident strawberry blond will tie the knot with investment banker Marc Mezvinsky in Rhinebeck, N.Y.

But will it be a match made in heaven? No, says the new social networking and niche dating site for singles, CanDoBetter.

Shallow and mean-spirited -- but oh so much fun -- the site lets the world decide if their partner is a perfect match based only on looks.

Chelsea, 30, and Marc, 32, are the featured couple this week, and so far about 6,000 viewers have rated them as incompatible. Only 16 percent said they were a perfect match, while 47 percent thought she could do better and 38 percent said he should ditch her for a better match.

"It's the wedding of the decade with Oprah Winfrey and British Prime Minister John Major among the reported 500 celebrity and political guests invited to the Chelsea wedding," said Dino Luzzi, CEO of Blast Applications, Inc., which created the site. "Hopefully by July 31, members and users of CanDoBetter.com will see this as a perfect match and they will be happily married for many years."

"There's always a famous celebrity or politician in the news for problems with their marriage, and CanDoBetter.com is a great way to take the pulse of what a younger demographic thinks of each couple," said Luzzi.

As for the Clinton-Mezvinsky wedding, celebrity watchers say they appear a good match when measured by their backgrounds.

"Chelsea and Marc have so much in common. They're old family friends who both went to Stanford," said Michelle Lee, editor in chief of In Touch Weekly.

The couple met as teenagers in Washington where Marc's parents, Ed Mezvinsky, D-Iowa, and former Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, D-Pa., were members of Congress.

He works at Goldman Sachs and she worked for a New York City hedge fund before getting her master's degree at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

Both are familiar with scandal. Chelsea was 18 during the Monica Lewinsky affair, which resulted in her father impeachment. Marc's father pleaded guilty in 2002 to swindling $10 million out of investors in a Nigerian scam.

"They both know what it's like to live through family scandals too?with her dad's sex scandal and his dad's fraud conviction. On paper, they certainly seem like a good match," Lee said.

Rate Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston

Next week, after the Clinton nuptials are old news, America's most famous unwed parents -- Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston -- will be the site's featured pair.

Evan Sneider, spokesman for CanDoBetter, admits the dating site is shallow.

"In the beginning looks matter in relationships," he said. "That's the unspoken truth. When you are dating someone, personality and drive and hobbies and personal things all fit into what you are looking for, but in the beginning looks matter."

The site is now free, but soon members will be able to pay a "minimal" fee and upload photos of themselves and their partners and get responses from other members.

About 40 million American singles, about half of the 90 million single population, have gone online to find love, according to Julie Spira, a cyber dating expert and author of "The Perils of Cyber Dating."

Niche dating sites are the fastest growing sites on the Internet, according to Spira, and those that capitalize on celebrities and provide the visuals to engage users.

"It's a clever way of getting people to enter the onling dating industry," she said. "I give them credit for creating buzz."

"It's a wonderful idea, I love it," said Mark Brooks, an online dating analyst for Courtland Brooks. "It's such a sea of ubiquity and most in that sea sure have people and they may even have the matching algorhythm, but there aren't many stand-out sites to choose from."

"From the business perspective, it's brilliant," he said. "You get people talking which is hard to do with Internet dating. They looked at [the dating site] Hot or Not and have gone one better?I can guarantee it will be knocked off quickly."

When guided by looks alone, Lee said Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are "number one when it comes to physical beauty, especially now that [he] has shaved his beard."

Other "perfect matches," according to Lee were Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubrey before they split, as well as Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith and Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson, who are "beautiful, but they're rarely photographed together."

Mismatches: Jennifer Lopez and Marc Antony

As far as mismatches, In Touch readers cite Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony who "look slightly mismatched but personality-wise, they really make it work," she said. The oddest couple might be Evan Rachel Wood and Marilyn Manson.

Lee said CanDoBetter just might appeal to its members because, "It's human nature to want to talk about other people. To be polite in social situations, most people suppress that side of themselves, so sites like this one tap into that desire to connect and judge."

"We all tell ourselves that looks don't matter, but that's obviously not entirely true," said Lee. " In dating surveys, a great sense of humor and intelligence often rank very high but, honestly, most people wouldn't meet and fall in love if it weren't for that initial physical attraction, right? "

But Joe Tracy, publisher of Online Dating Magazine, said CanDoBetter's contest is a distorted measurement of attractiveness.

"Attractiveness is not just based on physical looks, but also on personality," he said. "In essence, CanDoBetter.com is not a true measure of total attractiveness."

"Sites like CanDoBetter.com contribute to a social misconception that is popularized by Hollywood," said Tracy. "And as a result, it feeds into the falsehood that the only people worth dating are those that have a certain look. It does a disservice to society as a whole."