by Jessica Del Curto
Daily Lobo
Pedro Arturo Ramos said he was a skinny, nerdy guy with braces and glasses when he was in high school.
But when he flew out to New York City this summer for a Cosmopolitan magazine photo shoot, a modeling agent told him he was too thick.
The 23-year-old UNM engineering student was chosen as New Mexico's bachelor for the Cosmopolitan magazine's annual Bachelor Blowout.
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"My sister submitted a photo and a description over the Web," Ramos said. "I don't know what the selection process was, and there weren't any interviews."
A representative from the magazine called Ramos to tell him the news while he was in San Francisco interning for JP Morgan & Co.
He said he was flown out to a Disney ranch in Los Angeles, where he met the 50 other bachelors, and the magazine took about 100 photos.
"Photographers are very interesting, I guess," he said. "Every picture they took of me they were like, 'That looks great,' and you hadn't even moved. You just sit there."
Ramos was born in Eunice, N.M., just outside of Hobbs. He did well in school and read a lot.
He was skinny, he said, so when he got to UNM, he spent four years lifting weights to bulk up. He said he never really had any girlfriends before college.
"This is the last thing I would have expected," he said.
After the Los Angeles photo shoot, Ramos flew out to New York City for an industry party Cosmopolitan threw to launch the November issue, which featured the Bachelor Blowout spread.
"We were on the 'Today Show,' and right after that we were on 'Regis and Kelly,'" he said.
Partying at clubs for free as a VIP in New York City with the other bachelors was the highlight of the event, he said.
"You would think if you put 45 so-called good-looking guys together, there would be a lot of tension," he said. "But there was none of that."
He still keeps in touch with some of the men he met.
Ramos has since received at least 100 e-mails from women who congratulate him or are interested in him. He has a girlfriend, but said if he didn't, he wouldn't be interested in meeting women on the Internet.
"I'm not very good at responding to e-mails," he said.
He said his sister and the rest of his family are proud of him, but his friends tease him all the time.
"I can't even say anything without one of them saying, 'Oh, sorry we're not in Cosmo.'" But he takes the jokes in stride.
"Whatever. It could be worse," he said. "It could be much worse."
He said he enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame, but doesn't think he would make a career out of modeling.
"The whole thing, being treated like a VIP - it's nice, but at this point, it's not worth giving up everything I've worked on for four years," he said.
Ramos is hoping to graduate in December, and he has a job lined up with JP Morgan & Co. as an investment-banking analyst in Denver, Colo. He said he would put modeling on a to-do list after a family, a career and snowboarding.
"I've got too many goals and too much to do to sit around and take pictures," he said.
