Memoirs of a Smart Girl
by Candace Dempsey
From UnderWire.msn.com

Where I grew up, there were two kinds of girls. Pretty and smart. I was smart. 

My mother said inner beauty was what people valued. Not thick hair, cool clothes or sex appeal. Sure, you had to be neat and clean — what she called presentable. But what drew people to you were hidden things. Honesty, kindness and smarts.

I've forgiven my mother for this delusion, because she was a natural beauty with masses of black hair, a shapely figure and unblemished skin. She couldn't predict the misery she would inflict by sending me into junior high with brutally short hair, ferocious eyebrows and hairy legs.

I wasn't even allowed to smear makeup over my zitty skin. My mother considered makeup, like plucked eyebrows and shaved legs, too racy for young girls. She worried I might attract boys in black leather and turn into a slut.

Need I mention no boy ever wanted to dance with me? That I brought home fantastic grades?

In certain cultures, a wise woman is also a desirable woman. Think of Minerva, goddess of wisdom in Roman mythology. OK, she was a virgin, not like Venus, the goddess of love. But Minerva was strong and beautiful and proud. She had style. A goddess with glittering armor and tangled locks spilling out of a warrior's helmet, she aced out Dullness, the wench who'd preceded her. Known to the Greeks as Athena, she wove delicate tapestries and brandished an owl. A 40-foot statue of her, gleaming in gold and ivory, lit up the Parthenon. At festivals, Greeks carried her image through the streets, welcoming her with cries of joy and songs of praise.

Whatever our culture associates with smartness in girls, I had in spades. Bad hair cuts. Corrective shoes. Braces. A skinny body — alas, before Kate Moss cleared the way for waifs. Smart girls looked pinched and mean in my day. We excelled in debate. The only defining feature I lacked were those awful black spectacles that sex symbols like Julia Roberts wear when they play smart in films.

By the time I got to high school, I'd shed the braces and the corrective shoes. I was even allowed to shave my legs. But nobody could forget what a nightmare I'd been. Worst of all, I still believed my mother, who kept insisting looks didn't count.

I was sure there was something wrong with me, deep inside, that everybody else could see. Otherwise, wouldn't somebody have asked me to the prom?

Debby, a girl I hardly knew, finally rescued me. She was small and pert, with many friends. Naturally, she got lousy grades. One day she caught me moping around the mirror in the ladies' room at school.

"You know," she said in an irritated voice, "you'd be pretty if you tried."

"What?" I said in disbelief. Nobody had ever accused me of being a slacker before.

"You need to grow your hair out," she said. "Pluck your eyebrows. Buy some lipstick. Make an effort for God sakes.

This was a revelation. Maybe I wasn't ugly. Maybe I was just an underachiever in the looks department. Maybe prettiness, like chemistry, could be learned.

The steps Debby outlined were as practical as a study guide. I plucked and tweezed. I made friends at the makeup counter. I let my hair grow long.

In college I had so much fun that I nearly flunked out one semester. Clad in mini-skirts and platform heels, I hung out in dance clubs with boys in black leather. I wore string bikinis. Hot pants. I don't regret a second of it.

The problem was I couldn't seem to get smart and sexy into the same body. So when I was at my prettiest, I didn't feel smart — or even like myself.

After college I got married and took a job on a tiny newspaper in Seattle. Ever fond of extremes, I donned the uniform of the serious journalist. I cropped my hair and renounced all makeup except lipstick. I wore thick leather boots, black blazers and white cotton  shirts — tucked into faded Levis. I wanted, in the catchphrase of the day, "to be taken seriously."

An encounter with Gloria Steinem, the feminist leader, set me on the right track. Not the post-menopausal Gloria of the dowdy clothes and inner-child research. This was the Gloria who'd worked undercover at the Playboy Club, who'd always had a lover, who was known as "the thinking man's Jean Shrimpton" — Shrimpton being the Cindy Crawford of her era.

I met this Gloria at a press conference for Ms. magazine in Seattle. She was working the room, a willowy woman with aviator glasses and cascades of honey-colored hair down to her butt. She wore tons of makeup, a little gold mesh top, gold silk bell-bottoms and suede pumps. She was (well, except for Candice Bergen) the most beautiful women I have ever seen.

When the press conference started, I raised a timid hand and asked her an ultra-serious question about why women attack other women at work.

"Men are very good at dividing us up," she said. "We haven't learned how to get around that. We really need to try."

She looked straight at me and smiled. The glamour. The voltage from those famous eyes. She made me feel ridiculous in my utilitarian clothes. She taught me that prettiness isn't the opposite of smart, that you can have the body of a Bond girl and still call the shots.

Later I discovered that this goddess, author of Outrageous Acts & Everyday Rebellions, came from a background far more wretched than mine. She grew up homely and poor in Cleveland, with a father who died young and a mother who was mentally ill. Smarts lifted her out of Cleveland on a scholarship to Smith. Prettiness came later, acquired through trial and error.

I wish I could say these are good times for smart girls. But just the other day I was talking to my friend's 16-year-old daughter, an A student with beautiful blue eyes, thick hair and a body that's still in flux. She wanted to know why the boys at school favored tiny giggly girls. What was wrong with her that she couldn't get a date?

I told her that smarts would take her further in the long run than looks ever would. Well, that's true, but it was the wrong thing to say to a teenage girl who wonders if she'll ever be loved.

"But I want to enjoy high school," she said in a wistful voice, lamenting the car rides, the school dances and makeout sessions she would miss. I had to agree those are nice things to have.

"Promise me that you won't become a giggler," I finally said. "Don't try to act like somebody else. That doesn't work."

Then I told her what I had learned the hard way: Women don't have to choose between pretty and smart. We shouldn't let people divide us up that way. There's plenty of breathing room between Minerva and Venus.

Illustration by Antonio Cangemi