I often hear this1-10 scale used, most often by people in bars talking about their mate and date opportunities or dating histories. Also, weirdly… as crudely objectifying as this scale seems the most frequent users seem to be attractive young women rating other young women’s web posted pictures.
I know that Blake Edwards “10” popularized it but where did the use of this scale first start?
That was when I first heard about it.
I recall that the perfect 10 concept emerged from the 1976 Olympics when Nadia Comaneci became the first gymnast awarded a score of 10.0 in gymnastics. Prior to that there was some concept that no one should ever receive more than a 9.9, mainly out of tradition I suppose. The electronic sign wasn’t capable of displaying a 10.0 and showed a 1.0, enraging the crowd who didn’t understand, and starting a heated debate about whether a gymnast should get scored with a 10.
I don’t know if that’s what really started it, but in my experience the Perfect 10 and the 1 to 10 scale became popular for many things following that event.
As been mentioned: it is used in some sports. In addition, schools in some countries give grades between 1 and 10 (Netherlands for instance). A scale between 1 and 10 for me is the default when I need to assess anything.
Actually, it is interesting that people in countries that do not have this background, still use for attractiveness.
I just did a search in Google books for the phrase “scale of one to ten” and the first references to that I could find were in nineteenth century reports and papers from Ontario on how such a scale could be used in judging fruit. I’m not claiming that these references were the first time such a scale was used, but clearly using a scale like that to compare stuff goes back a while.
I know that I had already been acquainted with the “on a scale of 1 to 10” concept well before the movie and book Semi-Tough by Dan-Jenkins which dates from the early 1970s, but you’ll find the list Jenkins had at Dan Jenkins’ Lists (Wednesday, May 28, 2008) starting a few lines down the page with the lead-in **
**
Some friends at work and I committed that list to memory and applied it with glee to the women at work (and elsewhere). 
I would have forgotten all about it were it not for this OP!
Semi Tough, only it was reversed in the book. 1 was low, 10 was high. Billy Clyde held that there had never been a 10 in history. Barbara Jane Bookman disagreed.
Finnish school system uses 1-10 scale (from around 3rd grade to the end of high school) by the way, though I doubt that’s the origin of it. Truncated to 4-10 these days though but it started with 1-10.
Good meme detection, astro. I picked it up from classmates, and have no idea where they heard it first. The Olympics theory is a good one.
No, all of the rest of you are wrong.
The meme originated before the Movie 10, but it was the movie that made the meme universal.
Are all of you so young that you never heard of Bo Derek?
Did you read the OP? He refers to the movie, and notes that the movie popularized the scale.
Anyway, the 1-10 scale was old hat before the movie came out. If you’d pointed out a girl to a buddy in 1975 and said, “she’s a 7,” the reply would have been something like, “well, maybe a 6 1/2 at best…” and not “what are you talking about?” It was just part of the culture.
High school, (late '60’s) I remember my friends and I rating girls on a one to ten scale.
Sometimes we would say that a particular girl was a courtesy “6.5”, meaning that she was actually a “6”, but we were feeling kind at the moment, so she got an extra “.5”.
(What a bunch of jerks we were!)
to expand on the 1-10 scale:
Woops- TY for tipping me off to my inattention.
I think the idea was that 10 was the theoretical but unachievable perfect, the Platonic ideal. And no real human could ever be perfect.
I didn’t think Bo Derek was a 10, either.
Nor did/do I! It might be fun to see who all would get that rating from Dopers.
I’d have Salma Hayek in the list to be voted on. Who else?
