When good girls go dumb

Re-watching an episode of the sitcom Modern Family last week, I came across a scene between parents Phil and Claire Dunphy and their intelligent middle daughter Alex that really hit home. 14-year old Alex asks, ‘If dumb guys go for dumb girls, and the smart guys go for the dumb girls…. then what do the smart girls get?’ Her father’s answer:

‘Cats, mostly.’

It might not be the most thoughtful reply, but it sums up a question that many a clever teenage girl has to deal with in her formative years: what’s so unattractive about intelligence?

The conflicting pride and shame over being ‘smart’ was something I certainly dealt with in high school, where a friend used to helpfully reassure me that the only reason I didn’t get the guys was because they were scared of my intelligence. I watched the boys I had crushes on fall for girls who could barely spell their own name, racked with confusion as I tried to comprehend what I was doing wrong. It frustrated me even then that I should have to pretend that I was intellectually inferior to these boys just so they would like me. While now I certainly don’t think that a woman should define herself by whether or not she has a partner, I know that it’s hard not to worry about these things at an age where relationships and sex seem like the be-all and end-all for most people.

I was lucky to eventually find a guy who appreciated that I could string a sentence together and liked that I was interested in what was happening in the world, and being in this relationship meant that I started to take it for granted that there were men out there who liked a smart woman. But after seeing the promo for a new Australian season of Beauty and the Geek this week, I started thinking again about a problem that clearly continues well past high school and into adulthood. Why are smart women supposedly intimidating? And why does our society continue to equate stupidity with beauty?

The ad for the new season of Beauty and the Geek shows three women, answering the question “What does the Queen of England do?” Each woman replies with an appropriately ignorant answer before the show’s titles flash up on the screen. Another promo shows a girl giggling, declaring that “I don’t know what IQ means, but I think mine would be about a ten.” Whether these ads are staged or not, these girls are being implicitly ridiculed for their dumbness, and they’re well aware of what’s going on. They don’t mind looking like idiots on national television because they’re being called beautiful, and to them, that’s all that matters.

This association between beauty and dumbness frustrates me for several reasons. The first is that it’s perpetuating a stereotype that has done nothing but hinder the progress of women for the last few hundred years. The assumption is that a woman who spends time on her appearance should have no time for education–and even if she does, it should be of little importance to her. The assumption (or what I’ve noticed from growing up in a small rural community) is that intelligence is not sexy, because women should be seen and not heard and intelligence generally equals opinions, and, well, we can’t have that.

Secondly, this pervasive idea of dumb = beautiful is just as damaging to a teenage girl as constant exposure to images of unattainable weight and body shape. These stereotypes start to invade the subconscious, and we start to think that maybe we are inferior after all. Maybe no-one will ever want us and if we’re not ‘beautiful’ nothing can save us from eternal singledom. Our academic and professional achievements are rewarded but we still fly under the radar of those we wish to impress the most, and after years of dealing with these conflicted messages I can say that it certainly takes a while to get over these feelings.

What’s important is to not let the Dumb Hot Girl stereotype prevail. These women will undoubtedly always exist and it would be overly ambitious to think we can stamp out the stereotype altogether, but by not letting ourselves succumb to these expectations we can start to kick the problem, even if it is just a little at a time. It’s time to start proving that ignorance is never sexy. We need to show men that there’s certainly nothing to lose by dating an intelligent woman – and that sometimes, a little intimidation might be a good thing.

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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