from issue 12: still a twenty-something teenybopper
As pop songs go, Pink’s ‘Stupid Girls’ is a bit of a corker. Forget the attention grabbing Lindsay/Paris/Mary-Kate/J-Simp pay-outs in the clip for a moment and consider such lyrical gems as, ‘what happened to the dream of girl president, she’s dancing in the video next to 50 Cent’ and ‘world in despair, their only concern, will it fuck up my hair?’
Never mind that no girl who dreamed of being president—or prime minister, for that matter—would ever dance in a video next to 50 Cent (imagine how long it would take for that one to get trawled out in an election campaign). What I find most interesting about the song is the way it plays with the assumption that sexy equals stupid; and equally, that stupid equals sexy. That ‘maybe if I act like that, that guy will call me back’.
I guess you could be forgiven for falling for it. Jessica Simpson wiggled her way to the title of America’s sexiest woman as much on the back of her vacant eyes as she did on her hair, day-glo tan and double-Ds. Lindsay Lohan pretended to fail calculus to win her beau in Mean Girls. And didn’t Seth choose shallow Summer over whip-smart Anna on The OC?
It would seem Pink’s right; the epidemic of girls who think that playing down their smarts is the key to getting ahead is spreading and I cannot take anymore either. A few months ago, I participated in a television forum about young women and feminism. When the subject of whether men secretly preferred women who were less than their intellectual equals came up (I’d forcefully declared, ’No, that’s ridiculous! Guys love smart girls!’ in my pre-show interview), one of the girls in the audience said that she and her friends often ‘dumbed down’ to pick up.
’It’s embarrassing,’ she said, ’but when I go clubbing or to bars with my girlfriends and we stick around and look all prim and proper in our nice little outfits—and we are well dressed by the way—no one really approaches us. But if we start to laugh or giggle or do something really silly then we get attention. So I guess [dumbing down] is what we do to get attention.’
How depressing. But hold on a second—since when is laughing and being silly with your friends the same thing as, well, acting stupid? And is it really all that surprising that most people (male or female) feel more comfortable approaching someone who looks happy and friendly than someone who’s standing around being ‘prim and proper’? ‘Stupid’ may not be synonymous with ‘sexy’, but ‘having fun’ usually is (unless your idea of fun involves picking your toenails or dressing up like a Nazi). Revolutionary though it may sound to some, it’s not that hard to enjoy yourself—yes, even to giggle—at the same time as being smart. Call it multi-tasking.
As for guys being scared of smart chicks? Not in my experience. Being able to hold a decent conversation is actually an asset on the dating market. No guy or girl worth their weight in peanuts is going to turn you down because they’re intimidated by your wits, your grades or your secret fascination with the lifecycle of house moths. Sure, Tom Cruise made Katie Holmes change both her first and last names and give up acting to stay at home with their baby, but with all we know about Cruise’s control issues and penchant for jumping up and down on couches on international television, how many of us want to spend ten minutes in the same room as him?
Intelligence also comes in handy in non-kissing-related areas. Using your brain to its fullest capacity gives you more options when it comes to what you can do with your life. Speaking your mind makes it a lot harder for other people to push you around, dismiss you or make you do things that don’t seem like such a good idea. What’s more, being smart makes life more interesting. It makes you more interesting, and it makes other people more interesting to you too.
Even in pop culture, smart girls prosper in the end. Lindsay’s beau (bless his pretty cheekbones—er, soul) recoiled in horror when he found out she’d purposefully failed her tests so she had an excuse to spend more time with him. Summer ended up acing the SATs and getting into an Ivy League university while Seth bombed his interview and didn’t get in anywhere at all. And hard as it may be to believe (personally, I’m not buying it), rumour has it that Jessica Simpson actually has an IQ of 160, making her a certified genius. Meanwhile, Pink’s new role as the self-appointed poster girl for smart chicks has her career going better than ever.
Now that’s something to think about.
Rachel Hills, 23, is an editor for Vibewire.net and a writer on gender and media issues.
as much as i hate to argue with it, i disagree.
i’m 17 years old, an A grade student, and i’ve never even been on a date. its not that i don’t talk to guys, i have heaps of male friends and i am a generally sociable person with decent senseof humour and an interest in most things that don’t involve celebrities or the lastest fashion trends, the only problem; i’m not exactly stunningly beautiful. y’know, anarchial red hair, freckles and grey eyes.
i asked my (male) friend his opinion on why guys seem so adverse to me after my millionth declination, and the first thing he said is ”Leah, they do’t like you ‘cos they’re scared of you”. thinking he meant scared of my apperance, i threatened to hit him. he then assured me he actually meant that he flet guys were intimidated by the fact i was probably a lot smarter than them.
later i was thinking about it, and i came to the conclusion that perhaps what he said was true. i have another friend, a girl, who equally has never had a date. the difference between us is – although she is also an A grade student – shes a six-foot-two blonde surf lifesaver. meanwhile all the pretty girls in the lowest maths class have guys crawling after them.
go figure.