I watched Casino Royale on DVD the other day, and Daniel Craig made an interesting remark.
Daniel Craig (to Eva Greene): And by the way you carry yourself, I can tell that you are afraid that your beauty will offset your intelligence and cause others to take you less seriously, thus you overcompensate by wearing slightly masculine clothing and adopting a rather...prickly...demeanor, which unfortunately causes you get the exact same response that you were trying to avoid.
Not verbatim, but something to that effect. But what truly caught my interest was the "afraid that your beauty will offset your intelligence and cause others to take you less seriously" part.
As you know, Malaysians have two often used terms, "ah bengs" and "ah lians", referring to people who seem to be focused on outward appearances and have below average intelligence. But I'm puzzled as to where all these associations come from- "dumb blond", "ah lian", "empty-headed beauty". Its almost as if our societies equate beauty with stupidity. I wonder why? I know some good-looking people who are extremely intelligent but are often derided by others who know them superficially as dumb or immature based purely on how they look. Why? But its clear though, that many people fear that looking good will detract from their other qualities. To paraphrase Megan Fox in Transformers, "Do you think I'm shallow?" Unfortunately, many people would.
Maybe its stereotyping as usual. Instant judgement. Or can is it possible that beauty is in general inversely proportionate to IQ? I don't think so, but sometimes it seems that way.
I guess to some extent everyone judges books by their covers. I'm guilty of it as much as anyone. Such a shame.
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3 comments:
Well, it's rather difficult not to judge people by their looks cos often you can tell a person's character by their looks. But some good looking people have that intelligent look, like Natalie Portman.. unlike good looking people like Jessica Simpson who doesn't. So yeah, I think you can often tell by looking at a person:)
Haha, for all you know Jessica Simpson might have an IQ of 150 and Natalie Portman an IQ of 100. Unlikely, but still a possibility.
Now that you mention it, I guess it's more of the image one projects. If I walk down a street, see a girl wearing multiple earrings, makeup and has punk style clothing, she'd be instantly filed under the "rebel" category in my mind.
But am I stereotyping? I mean, if she dresses like that, I assume that is the image she WANTS to project, which also gives further insight into her character.
But on intelligence, I assume everyone has their interests. Just because two people are not on the same wavelength, that doesn't mean that one of them is less intelligent. For eg, I believe that "ah lians" would be pretty intelligent when it comes to stuff like makeup and being street-wise, something I myself cannot boast. Everyone is intelligent to some degree, and interests count too.
Who am I to brand them as stupid? =)
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