causeandeffectworld.com Blog

Beauty vs. brains arms race

Anyone who thinks women are the kinder, gentler sex should have a look at the Darwinian struggle taking place at DePauw University in Indiana.  Beauty babes have reclaimed the local chapter of the Delta Zeta sorority which had been usurped by brainiacs in recent years.  And, this was no covert operation. 

“Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.”
Sorority Evictions Raise Issue of Looks and Bias, New York Times, February 25, 2007

Apparently, the sorority had, over recent years, become more diverse, partly because it had recruited brainy women, including many science and math majors, as well as disabled women, without focusing as exclusively as some sororities on potential recruits’ sex appeal.  However, at the same time, the sorority had gained a negative stereotype, which hurt recruitment.  The national chapter had repeatedly warned the chapter that unless its membership increased, it could close.

Some of the women who were asked to leave have withdrawn from classes due to depression.  The President of DePauw was stunned by the insensitivity of the sorority.

It occurs to me that women (and men) go through life playing the hand that life has dealt them.  An important component of this is knowing the rules of the game and when to play your hand.  It is my impression that in the sorority domain, the hand that is being played is looks.  Pretty women will not cede this territory to women who are smarter.  Why should they?  This is their best hand and they will play it to the hilt.  Part of the reason why they must be so ruthless is because time is not their friend.  They have at most 10 years to get the most they can from their looks and so cannot afford to let anyone get in their way, or reduce the status of their group.

Women whose best card is brains should not waste their time in this domain.  That is not to say that looks don’t matter or that women shouldn’t want men to find them attractive.  However, it does suggest that women should simply cede sororities to those for whom looks is their competitive advance.  Other attributes – curiosity, adventure, intellectual achievement, accomplishment, financial resources; all these attributes that make them attractive take time to develop, but brainy women can relax because the value of their ‘assets’ increases over time. 

It is hard to be young and brainy, since the beautiful women are at their peak, when their hand is most valuable.  But, consider 10-15 years from now.  Beauty is starting to fade and their spouses, who married them for their looks, might have an affair or leave altogether.  This is when the brainiacs come into their own, while the beauties will be stuck in the land of botox and silicone.