Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I'll never reconcile myself to Hermione/Ron.

An excellent question:
"[W]hy [is it] that so few of the intellectual female characters prominent in pop culture wind up with equally intellectual guys[?] ... It's true also that stable relationships make for uninteresting television or plot interest in a series of novels. But I can't think of many more examples in which intellectual heroines *end up* with intellectual guys either."
Is the perceived alternative for an intellectual female not the hot smarty but the "too brilliant to bathe" fellow? Are we unwilling to match up persons gifted along both axes out of some unconscious feeling that it would be implausible or even socially undesirable?

Perhaps relatedly: I was at a party recently where two women, upon hearing that my significant other exceeded me in height by a foot, commenced to rant about short women hogging tall men instead of leaving them for more statuesque ladies. (One asked in a peevish tone whether there was a word for that. I suggested "greed.") Of course, this crowding-out only occurs because women of height X typically want a man of height X+Y. Is it perhaps also the case that women of IQ X want men of IQ X+Y (or that men of IQ X+Y want women with IQ X)?
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