When did men get this thing for Thick, and why do women keep indulging them? Female intelligence is still so routinely hidden there are porn sites that view it as a fetish (a whole generation of men believing that all 'clever women' spend their lives in clingy lab coats, chewing a pencil thoughtfully). It also explains why when certain men say: 'She's not just a pretty face', they don't always sound very happy about it (subtext: 'I wish she was just a pretty face'). Then there are the women themselves, hiding their intelligence as if it were an unruly bikini line lest showing evidence of a working brain send their man running for the hills.
Why is this still going on? A new study from Edinburgh University revealed that while, intelligence-wise, there are twice as many (competitive, driven) men as women in the highest 2 per cent, there were also twice as many in the lowest 2 per cent, with women much more likely to sustain a high academic standard throughout. So apart from a few male show-offs flexing their intellectual biceps, women emerged overall as by far the smarter, saner sex (well, that's how I choose to interpret it anyway). Which is all lovely until you see the sexual pool these women have got to work with - a few very high-grade males, but after that loads of Dumbs and Dumbers. Cue a very 21st-century problem: the Too-Smart Woman.
The Too-Smart Woman doesn't have to be 'boffin-level' smart, just 'too smart' for love - likely to fail with both the clever men (even if she fights off the competition, she's a daily threat to their USP) and their dumber counterparts (the novelty of 'keeping up' soon palls). All of which explains why the Too-Smart Woman can often be found sitting in wine bars knocking back wine, wondering aloud why she can't find a man who 'challenges' her - which, sadly, depending on how far gone she is, can mean anything from a shared love for Brahms to finding someone who doesn't watch Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway with his mouth open.
Either way, the Too-Smart Woman is in trouble. While there are men who adore sarky, witty women, too many others find them hard work. As a man once said: 'What "clever women" [his fingers did quotation marks] should realise is that they are tiring - when men come home from work they want a beer, not a challenge.' He seemed to be saying they want the Marilyn singing 'Happy Birthday' like an impressed six-year-old geisha, not the Marilyn who diligently pored over her scripts and held her own in high-octane drama workshops. The Cutie-Pie Myth, not The Complicated Reality.
All of which leads back to those gender traitors playing 'brain dead' to get their man. Were they right all along? Few can pull off The Dolly Parton (popular with men for seeming dumb, popular with women because we know she's not). The question for Too-Smart Women, and all those girls, gloriously triumphant, waving their A-pass GCSEs, seems to be: with this 'clever' thing, is the cleverest thing to hide it? Possibly. Or one could just enjoy being fab and brilliant, hold out for the guys who'll appreciate it and tell the 'lower 2 percentile' that, sadly, you never mastered the international language of Thick. As options go, I'm sure Marilyn would agree, that's the smartest.
