Smart Girls

Glenn Greenwald made this observation today in his roundup of press reports of and blogger reactions to an otherwise minor Iowa campaign trail snippet:

Just contrast the frosty, petulant reception they gave Hillary when she entered their bus with the way White House press reporters at the President’s news conferences, for years, cackle at his every attempt at humor and light up with glee when he deigns to engage them in his insulting frat-boy repartee. But in contrast to George the Popular Jock to whom they’re grateful for any attention, Hillary is the overly competitive, know-it-all girl at the front of the class with all the answers, and so instead of acting like professionals and just treating like her like a candidate running for President, and taking the opportunity to ask questions when she entered the bus, they instead band together like they’re in eighth grade and give the mean, unpopular girl the cold shoulder.

Is it any wonder that Hillary never boards the press bus? Personally, I’d rather be in Siberia than be in Iowa around all of that.

Hoo, boy, does that trigger rotten memories of my Ozarks grade school, junior high, and high school years in the 60s and 70sl! Like Glenn, I don’t have to support Hillary to be pained and disgusted by the story. (We know-it-all Seven Sister grads still need to stick together!) I’m disgusted to see that pack anti-intellectualism still reigns supreme, and pained to be reminded of behaviors I’d hoped to escape when I left Missouri more than 30 years ago.

Unlike Glenn, I don’t conflate “mean” with “smart.” A brainy girl who knows the answers was bound to be unpopular in 1960, but not necessarily because she was “mean.” I still recall, vividly, the hatred directed across the classroom toward my eagerly waving hand. The meanness came at me, not from me. Our freshman civics teacher, Coach Roweton, chided three of my female classmates who equaled or out-scored me on pop quizzes: “Donna, Peggy, you’re hiding your intelligence,” he’d say. Donna and Peggy were no dummies. Coach was right about that. Each shrewdly kept her light under a bushel, knowing full well the key to popularity was an apparently empty head. I can’t speak to classroom dynamics in Park Ridge, Illinois, but I have to imagine that it wasn’t far ahead of Parkview High School a decade later. Like Hillary, I fled the hostile middle west for an all-women’s college out East where achievement from young women was expected, not resented.

And, like Hillary, I’ve had to learn the hard way that, no matter how far we flee, lots of folks still dislike gals who know stuff. Having been chided at Washington dinner parties for my command of “facts,” I know all too well the malice aimed toward the female, gifted, and smart. “Walking dictionary” is still an epithet, not an accolade.

There was an internet joke circulating a few years back, calculating the comparative dollars/per/second earned by Michael Jordan versus Bill Gates. “Nerds rule!” they chortled. But smart, confident girls? Rule? Remains to be seen.

Nothing

Maira Kalman’s (http://www.mairakalman.com/) wonderful picture book, Hey Willy, See the Pyramids (http://www.mairakalman.com/children/heywilly.html) includes this poignant exchange between little Alexander and his sister Lulu:

“What is nothing?” Her insightful reply: “Nothing is when you are given a very small portion of ice cream by an adult, and you look at the plate and at the adult and you ask for more and the adult says you have a huge portion and you say ‘That’s it? That’s nothing.’ “And that is nothing,” says Lulu.

My friend Sara tells the story of a school reunion she attended in Israel in the late 90s. The reunion goers were Polish Jews, who, like Sara and her family, had been expelled from Poland in the late 1960s or early 1970s in one of the last late 20th century pogroms. Sara landed in Chicago a teenager, speaking absolutely no English. But she duly enrolled in the Chicago Public Schools–Von Steuben High–learned English, graduated, eventually married an accountant, moved to the North Shore suburb of Highland Park, and raised and nurtured three beautiful, successful children. Sara developed a passion for portrait photography, and with her husband supported the arts–theater and architecture in particular. This, while also caring for an aging mother and mother-in-law. In the several years after her youngest left for college Sara built her photography avocation into a small business, and now runs a specialty portrait studio out of her condo. For most of the time since her first child was born 37 some years ago, however, Sara did not have paid work outside the home.

Sara’s Polish diaspora cohort were returning to Israel from all over the world. Her old schoolmates had taken the divergent life paths available to determined immigrants, including gaining professional degrees. Sara noticed a particular name on the list of attendees: a female schoolmate who became a doctor. The doctor was amazingly accomplished and successful , although she never married or had a family, and boasted multiple awards, fellowships, and prestigious appointments. And boast she did. As soon as Sara greeted this classmate, the woman regaled Sara with three decades’ worth of achievements in university and medical school and medical practice and research and more. Finally, the doctor exhausted her supply of fabulous successes to relate. “So, Sara,” she asked, “what have you been doing the last 30 years?” Sara took a long look at her former friend before she replied.

“Oh, nothing.”