Stupid is Only Skin Deep

A little while ago I was leafing through a Victoria's Secret catalogue and I noticed something. No, not that I instantly felt fat, ugly, hideously unsexy, and generally disinclined to purchase any of the expensive teeny-tiny clothing that the corporation was presumably hoping I'd buy. (It's a weird business model, to be sure.)

No, what I noticed was that one model in particular looked to me in almost every picture to be really, really... not smart. Very beautiful, no doubt about it, but perhaps not the person you'd want to team up with for a scrabble tournament, say.

I know this doesn't hinder the impact of the lingerie per se, and I realize she was instructed to look sexy... very, very sexy by the photographer. But because I'm a woman and am not instantly stunned into a stupor by her gorgeous body, I actually took notice of the expression on her face. And it seemed to me that she had gone a tad past sexy and landed closer to moronic.

Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that she IS stupid. I'm saying she LOOKS stupid. She could be a Rhodes scholar for all I know. But if she is going to base her career on her looks, well, she's got to take the smooth with the rough. I don't make the rules.

Let's see if I can demonstrate what I mean. Adriana Lima is indisputably beautiful. Witness:

She's gorgeous. And yet, in the catalogue I was holding, she invariably had the look of a contestant on SCTV's Half-Wits.

Although I'm sure this was what caused the following picture: "[kchee, kchee, kchee, kchee] Yes, very sexy... [kchee, kchee, kchee, kchee] A sexy tigress on the hunt... [kchee, kchee, kchee, kchee] HUNT ME YOU POUTY TIGRESS!! [kchee, kchee, kchee, kchee]"; unfortunately, all I could think that happened was, "Say, Adriana what do you think of this copy of Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory?"

Do you see what I mean?

Maybe some more examples will help. Let's begin my imaginary interview.

Hi Adriana. Adriana...? Hi. Over here, honey. No, put down the shiny-- that's it, good.

I'm just going to ask you a few questions. Uh, yes, I'm with... Vogue, sure. Okay. As a supermodel many young women look up to you as someone to emulate. Are you at all concerned with studies that show teenage girls who have been exposed to fashion magazines develop unrealistic body images and in fact... are, um... succumbing to bulimia in alarming...

Um... well, we'll come back to that one.

I understand you're from Brazil. What's your feeling about multinational corporations coming into the poorer regions of Brazil and taking unfair economic advantage of corrupt and deplorable working conditions, conditions overtly condemned... and yet... uh, tacitly condoned by the gov...

Uh, yes. Maybe that was a bit of a tough one. Okay. The noted German mathematician and sometime satirist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg once said, "Even the gentlest, most modest and best of girls are always better, gentler and more modest if their mirrors have told them they are looking more beautiful than ever." What, if anything, do you...

Oh, fer-- whatever. Fine, one last question.

Just for shits and giggles: A train leaves Paris at 11:00 a.m travelling northbound and carrying a load of skeletal, bored-looking women. At the same time a train filled with cherry cheesecake leaves--

All right, all right! I'm leaving! Sheesh!

So touchy, these supermodels.