As a guy who ended up marrying the smart girl, I have to echo wil with a hearty so say we all on his comments  about actress/mathematician Danica “Winnie Cooper” McKellar’s new book about math geared toward girls.

Listen closely, girls: Smart is much, much, more attractive than dumb.

If there’s one thing I’ve tried getting through to my first born female child (and what I plan on drilling into the third born as soon as she decides it’s time to join us out here and can understand me), it’s that getting by on “cute” (which I think is an instinctive behavior on the part of young girls) isn’t the preferred means of making it through life. Getting something accomplished through talent and knowledge is much more valuable (and for those of us without the cute, we’ve no choice but to get by on talent). In the vast majority of cases, the cute’s going to disappear long before your brain does, so it only makes sense that developing skills and knowledge make sense over the long term.

And those “hot guys” who want nothing to do with a smart girl? They’re not worth your time and energy, so don’t try to hide your true nature. The right guy* who’ll appreciate you for your brain as well as your…well…other attributes, will come along, and will end up being much better relationship material.

Some of us, after all, realize that the girl in standard-teen-rom-com-plot-number-3 is actually much more attractive when she’s wearing the glasses, ponytail and/or big sweatshirt and spurning the jerk-jock’s advances than when she tosses away her personality for a prom dress and some contact lenses.

*His problem, of course, is that he has to get over his own self-consciousness issues, trend-following, and adolescent bullshit before he’s ready for you, but that’s the subject of another post altogether (or perhaps the story of my life from age 12 to 17…)