Beauty is not sublime.

I got pretty stressed out last month with work, so I've been relaxing in front of the TV more than usual this week. I caught Beauty & The Geek for the first time this week and saw a few episodes in a marathon tonight. BATG is a reality contest show along the lines of Survivor, with challenges to win and eliminations every episode, except the gimmick here is that the contestants are couples, a female "beauty" and a male "geek" who have been thrust together to cooperate as a team.

What I like about it is that a lot of the participants seem genuinely changed by the experience for the better. For the most part, I can see many of the beauties and geeks relate to each other as humans, befriending each other and getting to know the substance behind the stereotypes. In that sense, it's a nice hour of TV with flashes of optimism for humanity.

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After the BATG marathon, I surfed around on the web, curious how real the "reality" TV show was. I found the blog of Niels, one of the guys on the show, so I started browsing. One post had a comment that smacked of such sexist ignorance that I felt it warranted a response, my first comment to a stranger's personal blog ever.

Written by someone calling himself "Asian Playboy":

"...the thing is, intelligence isn’t rewarded in a woman and can actually be a negative thing. I remember reading that, statistically the more educated and intelligent a woman is (beyond standard college level), the less likely her chances at relationships and marriage.

Ergo, the world punishes excessive displays of intelligence by women."

I'm not sure if it's deliberate misogyny or just ignorance that leads to the assumption that a woman's single status is a result of being acted upon by a punishing world (of men?) rather than an active choice.

While it may be that educated women are statistically less likely to marry, this may be because they have higher standards for their mates, rather than because they're not chosen by men. In my experience, intelligence IS indeed rewarded in women, as well as men, by their own kind: other people of intelligence.

While I agree that there may be fewer privileges for women of ability when compared to men of comparable ability, that's very different than presuming that smart women are just waiting to be chosen by any man for marriage. Educated and intelligent women simply have fewer choices in romance because most don't cherish the idea of living with inferior men. Naturally, people with high standards have fewer potentials who meet those standards.

More than anything, it's about our choices and our willingness to take risks and go beyond our fears and self-doubts. We choose what we want, and usually we're attracted to people with the same best qualities as we have. An outwardly good-looking person who values beauty above all else may want a similarly superficial mate. An intelligent and ethical person will probably search for the same. It's a lot harder to find intelligent, ethical people in this world than good-looking ones.

"Just so what is morality but high intelligence?" - Henry James