When I was little, teachers and classmates told me I was smart. I heard this so out of proportion to all other topics that I concluded: This is all I am. This is all I have.
And of course there were books, shows, and movies that made it seem like that would be okay — that the smart girl sometimes wins, that intelligence bests riches. So I clung to being smart and never gave a second thought to branching out in the personal attribute pool.
It was only once I became a frumpy, bitter teenager, tired of accidentally overhearing less than flattering statements about myself, that I paid closer attention to those shows and movies. Sure, you can be smart, but you better damn well be pretty, too. You can be The Intelligent One, and people will love you, but when you take off your glasses, you need to look like Rachel Leigh Cook or Carly Pope.
True frumpy girls, it seems, get nowhere. Invest in contacts or — better yet — laser surgery.
There are exceptions, of course: if you're funny (I'm not), rich (I'm not), fashionable (I'm not), or just extraordinarily fun to be around (ba ha hahaha!), you might make do with being intelligent and ugly. I wasn't, didn't, and couldn't.
The next time I feel guilty about my late mother's voice ringing in my ears about how I'm too vain about my hair, or I spend too much time choosing an outfit — I'm just gonna tell her, "Sorry, Mami. We've got a ways to go yet, and I want to Be Not Nobody." And then I'll bust into that Vanessa Carlton song, and the ghost of my late mother, who was a pianist, will be so horrified that... okay, yeah.
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