Sunday, August 19, 2007

Beauty vs. Brains: what übergeeks think!

Many years ago a colleague who left us to start doing biz with the freshly liberated East(ern Europe) and worked out of Czech, told me: You know, Czech women are smart, and Slovak women are gorgeous! I got married to a Czech...

I remembered that conversation after reading a recent FSJ post in which he deals with something similar 'allegedly' written by Google superstar Sergey Brin. I took the liberty to republish it here as I found it to be both funny and immensely accurate... Probably Sergey would have wished to have written it himself...

"Falshivyi Styopa, privyet and namaste and all that, but your recent items have brought to mind something that Larry and I and all the other geeks at Google are often talking about when we're working out at the gym or playing Legos or just dreaming up some braindead new venture that we'll slap together in two weeks and release in beta and never bother to finish. We're always stunned by the way women hit on us, especially women from outside the Valley who don't really get what we're about. Just a fact of life that you're going to get a lot of attention from women when you're in your twenties and richer than God, I guess, and it's fun for a while but you quickly get bored of mowing through rows of femmebots and identi-skanks, as I'm sure you know. (If you can remember the Eighties, which I doubt. Ha!) But one thing these women don't get is that geeks aren't wired the same way as, say, professional athletes or Hollywood actors or rock stars. We're not looking for some girl who's `hot,' whatever that means. In fact, conventionally attractive women (ie blonde, too much makeup, hot body) can be almost a turn-off for your average geek. Too boring. No imagination. We like women who look a little more interesting. A few quirks, some cool flaws -- perfect.

"The one thing that glossy girls never seem to understand is that what really turns on a geek is brains. We like smart women. Really smart. Given the choice of cute and dumb versus not-cute but smart, we'll go for the smarty every time. Or, like me and you and many others, we'll hold out and get a woman who's both incredibly beautiful and extremely smart. But smart is the main thing. It's the primary thing. That's why Woz is dating Kathy Griffin. Sure, she's cute. Kind of. But it's her brains. Her wit. That's what makes her attractive. We're not looking for some version of Pamela Anderson. God no. We're lusting after Janeane Garofalo. Or Tina Fey. Or, closer to home, Marissa Mayer*. I know you've joked about her weird laugh but let's face it, Marissa is probably the dreamiest dream woman in the Valley. It's not because she's physically beautiful -- though she is, hands down, incredibly gorgeous. It's because she's so goddamn brilliant. You know? She's every geek's dream woman. She's so smart she's scary. Well, peace out as you say."

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* a Google Executive.

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