Lessons Learned Rather Late

Caveat: I will be linking to the Daily Mail, which is essentially a tabloid, which is to say that it specialises in attention-grabbing, emotion-yanking stories. One of the stories it likes to tell is "Unattractive Smart Woman Moans that She is Treated Unfairly by Life."

The unattractive smart woman sometimes complains that women hate her because she is too beautiful, but more often she complains that men reject her because she is too smart. There are egregiously unflattering photos, and I can only assume the writer is paid a hefty fee. (Pause while I ponder how big a fee would tempt me to humiliate myself in the Daily Mail.)

Here is the latest addition* to the ghastly tradition.

My first thoughts were as usual: what gets you ahead at work and school is not what makes you the belle of the ball, and there is nothing shameful in putting aside one set of intellectual tools to take up another. I know of a brain surgeon (not B.A.'s) who speaks to her much-less-well-paid husband in baby talk, much to the chagrin of the surgeon's single sister.

I thought also that it is indeed rude to go on holiday with a chap and then have a rip-snorting laugh-a-minute conversation in a language he doesn't understand right in front of him. B.A. is very goodnatured and tolerant, but he doesn't like that sort of thing either.

Finally I had a new thought, which is that the author should have dialled down and dated younger chaps, not older. This is the United Kingdom, so this is entirely possible. Any young man who is attractive to older, successful women is not going to mind if she dominates dinner conversations. He is going to expect it. He might also expect her to pick up the table at fancy restaurants, which is only fair if he is still on the bottom rungs of his chosen career.

But in general I think complaining because men like to be flattered by a woman instead of being argued into submission by her is as silly as railing against nature because chocolate is poisonous to dogs. Acknowledging this fact and adjusting one's social behaviour accordingly is what separates the Smart Smart girls from the Dumb Smart girls.

For those permanently  (but involuntarily) Single women who are utterly convinced that being fun instead of intellectual at parties is a form of dumbing down, may I suggest they take up studying a foreign language and attempt to converse with native speakers (minus, of course, the presence of a disgruntled monolingual beau)? This way you will be doing something intensely brainy while at the same time sounding charmingly hapless. You also have the added bonus of sounding romantically exotic.

That said, just sounding American or Canadian in Scotland makes you sound romantically exotic, one reason why Mrs Smartypants is now married. That and the fact that soon after I met B.A. I caught a cold so terrible, I could barely speak, let alone crush all comers with my fearsome intellect.

Update: It just occurs to me that the very fact that the Daily Mail delights in such clickbait as this article is evidence of how much people dislike well-paid older women complaining "It's 'cause I so smaaaaart!"

*Polish Pretend Son has just written in to point out that this story is actually from 2013.