I’m Not Dumb, I’m Pretty

I guess I have to start by outing myself as somewhat of a reality TV junkie. I’m not proud but there it is. My favorite is The Amazing Race which is a little less reality TV and a little more competition. It’s not the kind of show that is really enhanced by couples fighting--although there’s plenty of that--or by putting pretty people on who serve no other purpose than to be pretty--although there’s plenty of that, too. Especially this season.

One team actually is two male models. There are always male models. Mostly they are good for comic relief or some eye candy and although they do well in the competitions, eventually their own cockiness catches up with them and they get eliminated near the end of the race. These models, however, are recovering drug addicts and actually seem kind of cool and grateful to be competing so I don’t know why I bring them up except to illustrate how the pretty/normal people ratio is a bit skewed. There is also a team of two cheerleaders—giggling cheerleaders, mind you—who actually cheer pretty much all the time. And finally, a team consisting of the reigning Miss California and Miss New York. I kid you not. Cheerleaders and beauty queens? Do the producers of the show hate their viewers that much?

To begin the show Jamie and Kellie choose to identify themselves as “cheerleaders” even though they have both graduated from college recently and could have chosen to identify themselves as say “college grads” or something as mundane as “best friends”. Perhaps they don’t get to choose this for themselves but are at the mercy of the producers which I guess seems likely so I will cut them slack. They go on to discuss in their opening interview how intelligent they both are even though they are cheerleaders and then go on to say how they can have a conversation with a doorknob. And then giggle. They follow that up with quizzical looks to each other as one asks the other if the Muslim man they just met worships Buddha. And to top it off, they chant college cheers while riding in a pedicab across Beijing. See these are the kinds of things that make them look kind of, well, dumb. Not that I needed any help because everyone knows how I feel about cheerleaders anyway.

The beauty queens—who do in fact introduce themselves to the other racers as Miss California and Miss New York rather than say “friends” which leads me to believe that these people have some say in how they are labeled—fare somewhat better in the first couple legs of the race although they do smile incessantly which lends credence to my grandmother’s saying “if you keep making that face it’s going to freeze that way”. They do get lost and seem to have trouble finding a solution to that problem and finally ask some guy to show them where they need to go, which is reasonable, had they not spent 30 minutes wandering around doing nothing. In the second leg, they decide they are going to take matters into their own hands and sneak off at the train station to see about getting a better train to Mongolia. One blonde woman says to the other blonde woman (because at this point there is no telling them apart and I’m not sure there will ever be a point where it matters), “We have to be conspicuous.” See if you are going to use the 50 cent words, or in this case the 25 cent words you need to use them correctly. But I guess true to her word, the two are conspicuous as the male models follow them and foil their plan of catching an earlier train to Mongolia of which there is not one so the whole effort is wasted and they should have saved their energy because apparently they needed it. At the Detour challenge, they are in the lead but then lose a helmet they need to wear in order to finish. Do they look for it? Well, they looked over there and not finding it stood around forlornly while other teams passed them. Apparently, all that acting conspicuous and looking for a train that didn’t exist really took it out of them. Perhaps they thought one look at those beautiful sad faces was going to convince the other teams to stop and help them, which they did not because this is a race, duh! It does work on the Mongolian yak herder who runs all over the countryside looking for it. Here you go pretty lady! And off they go, happy and confident that yes, they are smart and competitive, too, in addition to being really, really pretty.

And what is the point to all this pointlessness? It’s this: these cheerleaders and beauty queens seem to spend an awful lot of their time trying to convince other people that in spite of being beautiful, they really are smart. Really. But, if you choose to trade on your looks people are going to judge you by your looks and aren’t going care much about your intelligence. You can’t position yourself as a pretty face and say but I’m really smart, too! I mean you might be smart but if you were, you wouldn’t have to say so, it would just show. In my opinion, if you have to go around telling people that you’re smart, not just beautiful, chances are you think you’re not smart and what you’re really looking for is someone else’s validation. This backfires because all they’re going to do is scrutinize your every move for evidence that you aren’t intelligent. Most people could say conspicuous when they meant inconspicuous and it would just be funny, but then most people aren’t begging to be validated as smart when they clearly put themselves out there as beautiful. Damn, I’m glad I’m just smart.