My feeling on it is that so long as perlmonks sticks to the Perl aspects of 100sexiestwomen or 100hunkiestguys or 437fattestgeeks, and doesn't get off on tangents over whether Cindy Crawford is hotter than Antonio Banderas ("mmm, Antonio", says my wife), it shouldn't be scaring away people.

It's when people are judged or evaluated in messages on perlmonks that you'll see people running away. Even if the participants in a forum aren't being judged, the mere presence of judgements about anyone's figure or looks sends the message "beware, we don't care about your brain, we care about your boobs/butt/bald spot".

That's my 2c, anyway.