smarter women = no dates

op-ed from nytimes Should Hillary Pretend to Be a Flight Attendant?

"Men did put significantly more weight on their assessment of a partner’s beauty, when choosing, than women did. We also found that women got more dates when they won high marks for looks.”

"It isn’t exactly that smarts were a complete turnoff for men: They preferred women whom they rated as smarter — but only up to a point ... It turns out that men avoided women whom they perceived to be smarter than themselves. The same held true for measures of career ambition — a woman could be ambitious, just not more ambitious than the man"

"men — and female secretaries — are not considered less competent if they dress sexy at work, but female executives are."

interesting points. and all true. in my experience. all but the most confident and/or comfortable (with who they are) of men have been turned off when they realize i'm smarter and more ambitious than them.

to be honest, high school is where i learned to be dumb. bc thats how you got boys to like you and laugh at you and pay attention to you. the more bimbolike you were the more attention you got and the more ppl try to take care of you. they tease you but mostly in that friendly i wanna get to kno you better flirty way.

let me correct myself, i didn't "learn to be dumb" or to fake being dumb. i hate fakers. rather: in high school, i learned to use a "skill"/trait i already had to my advantage. i'm not gonna lie, it wasn't that much of a stretch - mostly bc i realized in middle school that i tend to be booksmart and lack most sense and logic in the streetsmarts way. as such, i naturally tend to say kinda airheady things bc i talk before thinking through the implications of all that i'm saying and so a lot of what i say makes NO sense.

letting this side of me go, letting my mouth run all its thoughts before i'm done forming them is still the easiest way for me to make friends. its a long time before i can talk serioiusly or be serious around ppl; esp guys. even girls are more likely to approach me when i play the dumb card. it puts them at ease. they are more comfortable and less intimidated. i dont know why this is true. i dont even take myself to be that smart. this is maybe why most of the ppl close to me are well rounded/confident/comfortable/super nice and/or at the very least pretty happy w/themselves types of individuals.

i have noticed tho, that my closest guy friends (gal pals take a different route), and even the ones who i'm not that close to but know me so well, are all the ones who have called me out on this. all 3 of the main "loves" of my life (i put it in quotes bc i don't know what to make of "love" right now-am i even allowed to have 3 is that too many?) ok i'll change it: all 3 of the main interests in my life have completely called me out on "why do you have several sides to your personality? why do you front differently around different ppl?" and it's never that i mean to.

i have a fragile self and so i think it comes out naturally to be the easy to get to know non-threatening mouthrunning airhead. there is much less avoidance/rejection/shunning this way. no one likes a smartypants knowitall. not really. they're not so much fun. this is such a tangent from my main point. but mostly, it's true that pretty not as smart girls are more well liked IN GENERAL. i guess this was just my anecdotal evidence to back up Dowd's point. (she writes lots of pretty good/interesting gender issue articles).

another hillary-related op-ed: Hillary Fries the Waffle

i like the columnist's tone and style in this. it makes a good point.