Since the dawn of time, one question has lingered in the air: beauty or brains? Two Neanderthal women grunt at each other, one has discovered fire, the other has good hair. The Neanderthal men grunt in appreciation watching from the rock couch: “me want one with big rack.”

How we have evolved.

The crux of history reveals that women of any pedigree—goddesses, queens, poets, geniuses, et al— have dealt with the same paradox: beauty can make them a write-off, while the freedom to be fully themselves often means not being seen as “beautiful.” In our modern world, it isn’t much different.

Though I wouldn’t call myself a genius, I would call myself intuitive. I’ve been on ineffectual dates, nursing an espresso martini, when the caveman across from me blurts, “Huh, you’re funny,” or worse, “You’re smarter than you look.” And just like that, I’m back in school, staring at a jumble of numbers, twirling my pencil as the clock ticks, not knowing the answer. He asserts this so-called compliment as if intelligence were a party trick, like I’d just balanced a spoon on my nose or spun a plate for his amusement. In his version of the scene, it lands differently: I gasp, cheeks flushed, tearing open my blouse as I leap across the table “Me? You understand me? Oh, take me now, right here!” 

Instead, I take another sip and say, “Thanks.” Because I’ve seen this scene before. Like I said, it’s ancient.

The Impression Economy

Women are obviously multifaceted, yet people still treat us as whatever we appear to be on the surface. And I know that’s not just a gender thing, it’s a human thing. To be oneself in any regard is to be seen, and once people see us, they start sorting us into neat, lazy little boxes.

Take this: a woman works in corporate, but she’s also a fashion girlie—an office siren, if you will. She likes the tailored skirt, the heels, the impractical little cunty glasses. Because she’s invested in her appearance, because she chooses to be seen, she gets written off. Laughed at. Called a “slut” during water cooler whispers. Meanwhile, across the hall, there’s another woman: she doesn’t care about fashion, she’s bubbly, funny, intelligent. Maybe she struggles with the numbers a bit, but it doesn’t matter. She gets put in a box too, just a different one. Neither of them are wrong. Neither of them deserve to be diminished. But the system we exist in insists on a comparison hierarchy, deciding who gets to be taken seriously and who gets to be looked at.

So comes the question: are you here to be looked at? Once that logic sets in, it teaches both women to edit themselves. One edits herself to be respected, the other edits herself to remain respected. Different pressures, same result: a self that is constantly negotiated instead of freely expressed.

A Bimbo Built the Future

Hedy Lamarr was a successful actress known for her starring roles in erotic films, but she was also a self-taught inventor. In the 1940s, she and composer George Antheil began experimenting with constantly shifting radio frequencies, like a symphony moving through harmonies. They developed a system called “frequency hopping,” a breakthrough that would later lay the groundwork for technologies like Wi-Fi. Hedy was a sex icon and a genius; a contradiction that only existed in the minds of people underestimating her.

Putting it into perspective, would you dismiss a male astrophysicist who was also a hot pornstar? No, he would probably get a Nobel Prize and be called Space Daddy on TikTok. The truth is, a man’s looks and expression of sexuality don’t limit him in society—Space Daddy can be layered. He can be brains and beauty. 

Hate to bring him up but, Sigmund Freud (derogatory), had a name for all of this: the “Madonna-Whore” complex, the idea that men split women into two categories—pure “Madonnas” worthy of love and respect, or sexual “Whores” worthy of desire, but never both.

I think this same myopic rhetoric shows up when it comes to women being either “smart” or “sexy.” In the cultural imagination, we rarely get to be both. “Smart” women are seen as someone you marry, someone safe and respectable. While “sexy” women are reduced to something temporary or superficial. The framework itself is voyeuristic, like Margaret Atwood once wrote: we are staring through the keyhole of our own head, watching ourselves be watched. Our gaze will always falter at the everlooming male fantasy. 

Read Me Wrong

I’ve decided to make myself a kind of walking experiment. Boots on the ground, a deliberately low-cut top, dropped in a professional setting; a networking event. I can almost watch it happen in real time: I get sorted, neatly and efficiently, into the category of eye candy. I don’t entirely mind. Or at least, I tell myself I don’t. There’s a version of happiness in it; a performed ease, a false sense of control. The quiet hope that maybe I can still make something of myself in the room, even with the label stamped across my forehead. The onus, I tell myself, is on other people to have the intelligence and curiosity to look past it, to actually listen, to hear me the way I would hear them. But the reality is more complicated than that, because I can’t fully prove it to myself either.

No matter how hard I push in academia, how much I challenge myself or fill my head with knowledge, there’s still a voice that says: they all think I’m stupid. I know that voice isn’t entirely mine, it’s echoing familiar cultural archetypes: the “bimbo,” the “dumb blonde,” the woman who never has to be taken seriously. And before you know it settles into your psyche like tinnitus; a constant painful ringing. 

What is it about human nature that insists we pick one? Truthfully, I wanted to be optimistic here. I wanted to write about how being yourself is the only right way to be, how it shouldn’t matter who sees you as what, or how they choose to flatten you—you go girl!

But as I sit in my bedroom with the rose-colored glasses I can’t seem to take off, I’m reminded that this feels like an ongoing battle, one I can face with conviction, even with fiery gusto, but never fully win. Being caught within the ouroboros itself, forever in the dull loop of proving worth to ourselves or others. If we’ve evolved at all from those Neanderthals, if we’ve really learned anything, then we should be able to prove it or at the very least, stop pretending the question was ever beauty versus brains to begin with.