When I Was a Teenager, Being Dumb Made You Desirable. I Don’t Think I Ever Recovered.

Sophia Irvine

Aug 22

4 min read

I came from the “like” generation. The generation of teenagers who randomly put “like, like, just like randomly in a like sentence”. You may also know me from the “random” generation. The one where “random” was the answer to any question. 

A middle-to-late-aged millennial. We aren’t the most popular, and that’s fine. Despite the fact that we were pre-internet, post-not-having-a-TV and missing what many believe is a core character-building quality: watching The Simpsons. 

But we, as females, were not born as Ja’mie from Summer Heights High. We had a whole personality, thoughts and confidence before it was considered cool to be stupid.

This insane generational experience haunts me. I dream of who I might have been had I not been born in 1992, and had I not gone to an all-girls Catholic school where it became abruptly clear: if you wanted to be likeable, desirable, popular, then you couldn’t be smart.

Blame it on Marissa from the “OC,” blame Gossip Girl, blame me for not having enough strength of character to be the person I knew I was in the face of “all the pretty girls are dumb.”

I can’t see this being a trend in any generation before us. My sisters were hot but smart and never ditzy; ditzy was pathetic. Maybe it was the 19-year age gap that gave me the gift of knowing there was nothing cool about stupidity. It wasn’t endearing to pretend to know less. 

So naturally, I acted like my sisters in their early twenties, but I was actually a child at a small and wholesome public school. If anything, I was too smart, not statistically. It was just in my attitude. Teacher asking a question? I probably knew the answer. Even if I didn’t, I pretended I did. Third speaker in the debating team, the only member who did not have to take turns debating as speaker number one or two. A fact I told anyone who would listen.

Oh, there’s a showcase? Let me choreograph my own dance to Shania Twain's ‘Man I Feel Like A Woman’ at the age of eight. Then be offended when people found it comical, the song name and my age, of course, never my performance; no – the performance was flawless. I rotated five boyfriends, as we all did, just for dramatic purposes during recess and pre- and post-school care. I wasn’t the prettiest girl, but I definitely thought I could be. I made up ghost stories of local hauntings that kept a steady audience for any field trip. I also may have led the charge in introducing ‘a number one girl group’, resulting in delusional rules and slight bullying. In my defence, Jawbreaker was a really formative film, and my 20-something-year-old sisters were sassy and partying and gossiping. Really embracing their bitch era. I hope it brings you comfort to know that karma is real and that I paid for my sins before primary school finished, and in high school, just for good measure.

So, imagine my horror: arriving at an all-girls school where my classmates looked like supermodels and were fun and airy, but for some reason would not admit they knew anything, or that they enjoyed learning, or that being smart is cool because boys were significantly dumber, and we had the advantage, but the advantage didn’t matter. Boys didn’t want you if you tried in school; trying was the worst thing you could do. Forget your social standing if you were brave enough to admit you were excited to become smarter. If school made you feel like you were on your way to your full power and potential.

This isn’t a case of the hot and cool girls deciding dumb is cute, dumb is in. We all fell victim to societal pressure to curb our intelligence because it was considered attractive at the time. Of course there were girls strong enough to resist; I just wasn’t one of them. I have been struck with many tragedies and losses in this life. All unbearable to live through, but I have never looked back on my high-school years and thought, “those were the days.” No, those were the days that I destroyed my authentic, if not vain, life force and shoved her so far down I still don’t think I know her in her entirety.

My spirit animal is my pre-high school self, and that is my fault, not society's. But I do think being a teenager in the rise of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian had this strange effect. Both these women have now proven to be highly intelligent, but even they fell victim to this insane trend: the ditzier they appeared, the higher their value was. More specifically to men and the patriarchy, but that stretched so far and wide that a fourteen-year-old girl in Sydney, Australia, wouldn’t be caught dead in the debate team. 

The girls from my high school are incredibly smart, talented, and most importantly, kind. But I have never asked them, “Hey, what was up with that ‘the dumber the better” act we all did?” Did it affect them the way it has affected me?

I left high school and went straight into a play where I was appropriately slapped by the reality that to succeed, you had to try, and that everyone around me who was succeeding was not afraid to show their efforts or intelligence. So, I spent my twenties trying to conjure up my childhood self that believed I could do anything, the girl that was smart and powerful because of it.

High school years can very much feel like adapt or die. Now I’m terrified I’m not smart enough to be in a room full of writers and artists. And most likely it’s my own lack of accountability that caused this, but I still wonder who I would have been had I raged against the machine and didn’t fall for what I believe is one of the most detrimental trends we have ever faced. Stupidity. And I plead, I beg, if it returns, please don’t fall for it. The cost of pretending is far greater than teenage survival.