Yesterday's New York Times had a column by Maureen Dowd (who usually annoys the crap out of me) that stopped me dead in my tracks. It opens with the story of a woman who is a doctor married to an econ professor at Columbia. When they met, the woman's granny told her not to let him know how smart she was. The couple found that advice anachronistically adorable, and got married after she proposed to him. The prof went on to conduct a two-year study with another econ professor and two psychologists of Columbia students' dating preferences. Here's what he found:
“We found that 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.”Cry. So it seems that because I choose my friends and my friends choose their partners based on better qualities than the average asshole, my anecdotal evidence is smashed to pieces of loneliness and broken dreams on the cruel rocks of male stupidity. As CUSS readers, you are clearly intelligent people. I'm curious what your experience has been in selecting a partner of the opposite sex and your friends' experiences.
He continued: “By contrast, intelligence ratings were more than twice as important in predicting women’s choices as men’s. 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 considering her for a date.
“When women were the ones choosing, the more intelligence and ambition the men had, the better. So, yes, the stereotypes appear to be true: We males are a gender of fragile egos in search of a pretty face and are threatened by brains or success that exceeds our own.”
All of a sudden, I'm evaluating all of my friends and their relationships. This is great!
ReplyDeleteI have two female friends who are extremely intelligent and they've both had a heck of a time finding someone. One of them is very charismatic, so she attracts men no matter what. Her problem is that she gets bored with them because they're not as smart as she is.
Then I look around at my male friends and I'd say that half are involved in relationships with women who are smarter than they are. The other half only think they're smarter than their wives/girlfriends.
I don't even talk to people that I find dumb.
ReplyDeleteSnobby, yes, but useful.
I was kind of relieved when I started hanging with the nyu law kids, because they were all smart.
After years of marriage, my husband admitted that when he met me, he thought I was scatterbrained and ding-y. (It's probably because I tend to talk fast and then I stutter.) Later, he says, he realized, "She's smarter than I am!" Well, duh! ;)
ReplyDeleteIt makes me wonder, though, how things might have worked out if I'd come across as smarter from the get-go.
I actually had a man to tell me that I shouldn't try to engage him in a real conversation; he had no interest in me as a real person. He only wanted someone that was pretty, would wear revealing clothes, and allow his hands to roam at will.
ReplyDeleteHow about same-sex intelligence issues?
ReplyDeleteI had a live-in girlfriend who had always sought out women she considered dumber than her so she could look brilliant in the relationship. I was her first stab at a relationship with someone smarter than her. She drove me nuts. I finally killed her.
Well...no. But I did eventually run screaming into the night, and into the arms of a smart girl. It's a million times more satisfying.
Well, I spent a lot of time single, and I consider myself to be on the smart side. I know I intimidated some people. Thank goodness for my Sweetie.
ReplyDeleteA good friend of mine has a TERRIBLE time finding guys, or getting them to call her back after one date. She's definitely one of the brightest women I know, and I'm sure that plays a part in it.