Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Dru and I went for drinks last night and he mentioned this article. I know that sounds incredibly, incredibly obnoxious. I wouldn’t call myself smart, but “overthinker” isn’t much of a stretch.

Mostly I’m sharing because of this quote:

“At some point in your life, you got pegged as a smart person. From then on, that was your principal identity: The Smart One. Especially if you had a sibling who was better-looking than you, in which case she (or he) was The Pretty One.”

It reminds me of the time when my grandmother’s best friend was introducing someone to me and my sisters. She said: "This is Amanda. This is Nicole. And this is the one I call “The Beauty.”"

Oh, by the way, we were at my grandmother’s wake.

1 comment:

Feminist said...

That article was annoying. I'm real smart, but I came from stupid and uneducated people--perhaps this is why I am capable of relationships? As a matter of fact, I believe it's the crazy drugs my psychiatrist prescribed! Anyway, it struck me as being less about smart people and more about upper-middle-class-white-people.

But the only true part of it is the part you mentioned (also, you're def. in the top 5%). My sister was the pretty one (and a dancer, even, and is now a professional dancer, whilst I spend my time reading Middle English and talking about Medieval Misogyny...) and the nice one and the ditzy one, and I was the bitchy one and the mean one and the fat one. And when she came to visit me at Wellesley, I told my friends that my sister, who was like me but prettier, was coming. And I really stressed the whole "prettier version of me" thing. And then she came. And they were like, YOU TWO LOOK EXACTLY ALIKE.
And also she's just as bitchy and smart as I am. Neither of us are nice, actually. And we do actually look freakishly alike (but she does have shoulder muscles, which like nobody else has). And we're both only popular because we're mean, kind of.

But that's not my intelligence's fault. It's my parents' fault.

Also I love your blog. Please continue updating at this level of frequency.