Image by Benjamin Dewey of Things Could Be Worse. Order a print here.
Benjamin Dewey says draws
Do You know a ravishing scientist who deserves more attention for her mathematical derivations than for her aesthetic wonders? Show her you understand how vexing the veil of comeliness can be when it masks an equally exquisite brain for which no one shows a primary concern! This illustration is available as a keepsake from my emporium.
Tagged: For Lisa Randall. Steph Levi. Saskia de Vries and Hedy Lamarr Beauty Great Thinker Lady Scientist Cupid Brilliant often overshadows work Deriving Maxwell's Equations for the Potentials chalk top hat love
Source: Things Could Be Worse
It's kind of a big deal. There was a sort of lowlife blogger years ago who'd preface many of the images he'd repost with comments like "With a body like that she should never have to work a day."
Leaving aside the insane idea that supporting one's self with sex or "beauty" isn't work, where does anyone get the idea that it would be fun to have a brain and never fucking use it?
In my socially checkered past I've managed to live in a number of situations where one occasionally encounters "kept" women: higher-end rock music culture, cocaine-dealer culture (closely related to the preceding), middle-upper-class and upper-upper-class neighborhoods (where I was a paperboy), and country-club culture (related to the preceding.) And near as I can tell, a almost-synonymous word for people (mostly women) who not only aren't expected not to work but are outright expected not to work is "alcoholic."
Human beings don't make very good pets.
Years and years ago a friend my age, a nursing student who had grown up in country-club culture, said she had to get out because what other girls from her neighborhood were going through was either making them insane or driving them to drink. She said, yeah, it might sound like fun to "do nothing but lie on your back eating bonbons and drinking Cutty Sark," while your husband worked, the gardner and maid took care of the house and the nanny took care of the kids, but, "Frankly I'd be happier changing bedpans for a living." (I lost touch with her decades ago, before she finished nursing school, but she was on track to become a Nurse Practitioner rather than a bedpan changer.)
I dunno. I've been catching up on my reading this morning and running into a lot of commentary by women scientists, women skeptics, women in medicine, and even little girls trying to go to school. The theme is just...
You know what, it's just dumb! Not to mention just an unbelievable assault on human potential. Not to mention an even bigger insult to half of all of humanity! But mostly just really fucking dumb. Richard Fineman was attractive enough but no one ever suggested he couldn't be attractive and also win a Nobel Prize in physics. Anderson Cooper is attractive enough but no one ever suggest he's "too pretty to do real reporting." And even though the first President George Bush selected the sorry-assed J. Danforth Quayle for his good looks ("women will be throwing their underwear at him at campaign stops"), and even though he was never smarter than a bag full of golf balls, there was still never any question that he was also going to work. Heck, even Mitt (Mittens) Romney, who was born with both a silver foot in his mouth and a full head of hair continues to work even after making further piles of money putting other people out of work. And while a lot of people believe he shouldn't do the job he's looking for, nobody deplores his basic interest or desire in working, period. So where's the fucking contradiction in women being attractive and working? Brilliantly or otherwise?
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Beauty and brains are a trade
Submitted by Lynn Gazis-Sax (not verified) on Sun, 2012-01-22 16:29.Beauty and brains are a trade off when you're talking about the kind of "beauty" and the kind of "brains" that can only be achieved with a large time investment; since we all have a finite amount of time, we can't invest a huge amount of time in everything. Otherwise, I don't see the need to see them as competing.
And I certainly see supporting yourself with "beauty" as just as much work as supporting yourself with "brains."
It's interesting that you
Submitted by SnowdropExplodes (not verified) on Sun, 2012-01-22 18:43.It's interesting that you reference Richard Feynman in there - in "Surely You're Joking..." he describes how, when he had art as his hobby, one of his drawings was a female nude, and he called it "Marie Curie considering the properties of radium", because in thinking of Madame Curie as a scientist, he thought people forgot that she was also a woman - the mirror image phenomenon, but with the same fundamental brains/beauty dichotomy that only ever seems to be applied to women.
It is interesting that there
Submitted by Peter K (not verified) on Mon, 2012-01-23 18:12.It is interesting that there exists a stereotype that if a woman has a considerable intellect that she is generally going to be homely. There are some pretty dramatic examples of exactly the opposite being true. Where a beautiful woman is also quite brilliant. Take Elizabeth Warren. It really does not matter if a man agrees or disagrees with her political view, I happen to agree with her pretty consistently. But I also find her incredibly alluring.
She may not be beautiful in the most common standards but when I watch her speak and listen to the content of what she is saying I have to say that I am moved by her. I think a woman can be incredibly sexy especially when she is not actively trying to be and their ability to think about things and carry on conversations are infinitely more attractive to a growing segment of the male population (in my opinion) then some airhead bimbo with inflated body parts that struggles to put more than 2 syllables together because "it's HAAARRD"
I think the "women can be hot
Submitted by IBlameALLRepublicans! (not verified) on Sat, 2012-01-28 14:33.I think the "women can be hot or smart, but not both" dichotomy comes from a misogynistic culture that frowns upon women who could work in porn, as models, or as Playboy Bunnies "wasting" their good looks on a career. It's part 50s fetishization and partly a desire to infantalize us. Intelligent women are really threatening to begin with. And speaking as an intelligent woman who also happens to look like Portia DeRossi (If I must look like a celebrity, that's a good one, she's a lesbian and married to Ellen DeGeneres!), let me tell you, it's damned lonely here.
Men hate me because I am smarter than they are and won't sleep with them. Women hate me because I might take their jobs and their men, and possibly sleep with the boss ('cause all hot women sleep with their bosses, of course).
I just went to a giant job fair/group interview and tried to make small talk with the women my age who were competing for jobs in my same department, user interface engineering. They kept being really rude to me and snubbing me, or giving me curt one-word answers and only speaking with each other. When the night drew to a close, I realized why. I was ranked as the #1 candidate by everyone at the company.
I don't have any friends either. It's just me and my partner. It's lonely, but I'd rather that than a bunch of people who use me for what they can get, or who secretly resent me. Better to be alone.