How to Date a Girl Smarter Than You

You are the Great 21st Century Man, reared in the information age, butch with the knowledge that all those axons, dendrites and neurons do their jobs with sturdy, vitamin-packed reliability.

You know who Tiger Woods is, and you know he makes more money than you do by playing golf. You know what the 33 signifies on a bottle of Rolling Rock, and how to open that bottle with a cigarette lighter. You know to split eights and double down on 11, when to lift on the throttle through a hairpin, where to go for a swell time when you're in Montreal and why double-vented suit jackets fit you better than single-vented ones. You know pi to three decimal places (or at least that it's somewhere around five), and that it was Barzini all along. You are the Great 21st Century Man, hear your knowledge roar.

You know what? Forget it all: Women are Smarter than you are. You're becoming an intellectual artifact, more Cro-Mag than sapiens, comprehensively outmatched, outpaced and outwitted by the fairer sex. The distaff team isn't just gaining on you; they're past you, looking at you disdainfully in the rearview mirror.

Here's the reality: Fifty-seven percent of straight-A students are girls. Fifty-seven percent of high school dropouts are boys. Last year, for the first time, more women than men applied to law school. As recently as 1970, more than 90 percent of law school students were male. The percentage of female MBA candidates at Harvard Business School has more than doubled in less than 20 years, and now it's at 30 percent and growing.

Across the land, colleges scramble to get men into the ivory tower. Women outnumbered men in Berkeley's 2000 freshman class. Two years ago, at Dickinson College, a well-regarded liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, only 37 percent of the freshman class was male. Robert Massa, vice president for enrollment at Dickinson, is trying to close the gender gap, though he admits that some people "might say it's preposterous for me to say white males add diversity." As USA Today recently observed, some schools (such as Fisk University in Nashville and Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts) recruit male applicants to compensate for student populations that--as in Fisk's case--run more than 70 percent female.

And men are flailing in areas other than academics. In a Rutgers Marriage Project study of sex and relationships among noncollege men and women under 30 conducted in 1999, women were found to be more confident and responsible, with, as the study put it, "clear and generally realistic plans for moving up the career ladder." Men, on the other hand, seemed less focused: When they talked about getting ahead, their goals included such lofty ambitions as winning the lottery.

There's a fair probability your girlfriend--that lithe, ponytailed blonde with the long neck and perfect upper lip who has a master's in linguistic anthropology from Brown and a J.D. from Columbia, started her own hedge fund and was gathering specimens in the park for her monograph on South American polyommatine lycaenids when you, trying vainly to walk while unscrewing the cap from a Powerade, swung your elbow into her face--is also smarter than you are. It's not idly or flippantly that she says she loves you for your "reassuring impassivity" (and your meaty thighs).

If too many repeats of The Man Show and that constant flow of Old Milwaukee have addled your brain, let Paul Theroux, the novelist and travel writer, summarize it for you: "I have always disliked being a man," he writes in an essay called "Being a Man." "The whole idea of manhood in America is pitiful, in my opinion." And not just pitiful, according to Theroux, but "unfeeling," "primitive," "crippling," "hideous" and, naturally, "stupid" as well.

Your only hope, then, is more knowledge. Herewith, we present a guide to the smart girls, and what you need to know to keep them happy.

Smart Girl Phyla

Obviously, smart girls come in all shapes and sizes. Not all of them fall under the following four classifications. But the taxonomy goes roughly like this:

Miss Coldman-Skadden-Scalia

Works as: Investment banker, corporate law partner, Supreme Court clerk, TV business reporter. Looking for a guy who: Will either provide necessary leverage to get further ahead or, occasionally, a slacker type who gives her hip cred. Will one day: Be managing partner of the firm, owner of several small islands. Personality Profile: A frightening but often alluring mix of native intelligence, drive, power and ambition. Can be extremely temperamental. Between the Sheets: "I went out with one girl--a mutual fund manager--who was so intense and was always the best in everything," says Adam, 28, also an investment banker. "So when she gave me head, which was often, she absolutely had to make me come, even if I had other things in mind. Which led to a lot of soreness, frankly."

Miss Mensa

Works as: Doctor, engineer, professor, think-tank researcher. Looking for a guy Who: Spends as much time as she does in the lab, hospital or reading room and doesn't care that she doesn't have time to spend an hour every morning putting herself together. Will one day: Accept a Nobel Prize from the king of Sweden. Personality Profile: The least communicative of the bunch, and weighted toward painful shyness brought about when teased by classmates after she won the Physics Olympiad championship as a teenager. Between the Sheets: The sleeper, so to speak, of the smart girls. Pure intellectual prowess and generally reserved manner may mask intense need for excitement and action--i.e., dirty, unrestrained sex--outside work or school. "When my girlfriend first told me that she had been a math and accounting major in college," remembers Todd, 24, "and was working as an actuary, I thought, Wow, she sounds astoundingly dull. But she's as close to a nymphomaniac as I think a woman can come without being self-destructive."

Miss Semiotics on Fire

Works as: Novelist, playwright, activist, editor of left-wing political journal, grad-student stripper. Looking for a guy who: Can sit across from her at a coffee bar (perhaps somewhere more socially conscious than Starbucks) and talk for 18 hours straight without flagging about the function of ekphrasis in the description of cities as portrayed in the Iliad and Hesiod's Shield of Heracles. Will one day: Live in a small New England town writing a treatise. Personality Profile: Often wide-eyed, gregarious and emotionally unlocked. Will often explain why the switch her parents made from cotton to disposable diapers has altered her thinking about poststructuralism. Between the Sheets: Open, experimental, wild. "We'd been dating for all of six days," says Russell, 29, of his writer-grad student fiancée, "when completely naked, spread-eagled pictures of her--like 70 of them--suddenly went up in my college art gallery."

Miss Gum-Snapping Philosopher

Works as: Supermarket checkout girl, Denny's waitress, nurse's assistant. Looking for a guy who: Won't sneer and pat her behind as she walks by, and who loves spending Friday nights chilling out with a little Velvet Underground, smoking butts and rapping about Borges. Actually, is a little embittered toward men in general, since the guy she married at the age of 17 ditched her and her two-year-old last Christmas Eve. Will one day be: Doing exactly what she's doing now. Personality Profile: Sullen, even churlish, she's the proverbial smart-girl iceberg. It's all under the surface. Between the Sheets: A toss-up: could be something of a jewel or could be tired of men and sex and all that.

Ways to Fumigate your Apartment of that Prevailing Dumb-Guy Stench

(1) Ditch the PlayStation, at least for one night. No matter how good you are at Final Fantasy VI, you do not want to conjure the image of you in your briefs at two in the morning, control pad dangling between your legs, as you tap away mindlessly with a droopy jaw.

(2) Bury your dog-eared copies of Car and Driver, the Victoria's Secret catalog and Circumaural Stereo Headphone Monthly. Stack your Playboys and leave the top one open to the interview. (When she finds it, let her walk you through the pictorials and The Playboy Advisor--you will be well rewarded.) Throw out Maxim. Get the latest issues of Granta, Harvard Business Review, Lingua Franca and Scientific American, and preemptively bend the spines.

(3) Rethink the refrigerator: Shove those cans of Schlitz to the back, get rid of the eight moldy jars of salsa, and find a bottle of Riesling (maybe a 1998 Trimbach) and some interesting vegetables--like white asparagus and haricots verts--to brighten the landscape. And another thing: Lose the Cindy (continued on page 165) Smart Girls (continued from page 96) Margolis calendar magnet.

(4) As beloved as your Chris Farley DVD and Slayer boxed sets are to you, smart girls will sneer at lowbrow taste, so better to prominently display a complete set of Bruckner symphonies and a well-worn Kurosawa collection on DVD.

(5) Trash the beer bong. It'll be better for you in the long run.

You may be in Over Your Puny Head When ...

(1) She figures out 10, 15 and 20 percent of the tip, both pretax and posttax, before you've found the bottom line.

(2) She answers every question correctly on a master's-edition Jeopardy.

(3) She and your dad have an intense conversation about economics that you can't begin to understand.

How to Seem Smarter Than You Are

(1) Use props. For instance, arrange to meet her at a cafe and get there 15 minutes early. Look deep in concentration as you attempt to comprehend the preposterous milieu of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. And when she strolls up, ever so rakishly slip off those horn-rimmed spectacles and fold them into your breast pocket.

(2) Know obscure facts about obscure subjects. Mention casually that you've been trying to work out how Proust's living in a room with cork walls influenced his prose stylings or whether maple or pearwood purling gave better resonance to 19th century Italian cellos. But when she follows up, for instance, by asking, "That's fascinating. Why did Proust live in a room with cork walls?" the skill is all in the swift dodge. ("Because he liked to keep his emotions all bottled up.")

(3) Read the daily paper--and not just USA Today, and not just the box scores.

(4) Be prepared. Before you go to that trendy Austrian-Cantonese fusion joint for dinner, read a few reviews so when you sit down, you can make an informed suggestion. Better yet, stop by the place before and find out where the bathroom is, so when she asks, you appear to have been a frequent guest.

(5) Make yourself useful. Even smart girls aren't especially mechanically inclined, so fixing her computer printer with a nail clipper and a pen cap would be a good thing. Assemble her Ikea couch with your bare hands. Or tell her when she's getting shafted by the local auto mechanic.

(6) Wear good shoes. For one night at least, pair your Levi's with some cordovan, tassel-free and metal-free loafers, rather than those ancient Chuck Taylors.

(7) Be decisive. It's more important to her than what's on your bookshelf (though you should have a bookshelf). When a girl asks what you want to do and you say, "I don't know" or "Whatever you want," you come across dumb as dirt. If a credit card doesn't work at a restaurant, have another way to pay instead of sitting there astonished. If you seem to know what you're doing and act confident, you'll look smart and she'll be impressed.

From the Mouths of High-Iq Babes

"The whole not-going-to-the-doctor, not-asking-for-directions thing is a dumb-guy problem," says Nicole, 34, an orthopedic surgeon. "Men think being all macho-stoic and refusing to get help is a sign of intelligence. It makes their lives unnecessarily difficult and it lessens their longevity. What confounds me is all the extra aggravation guys go through spending hours and gallons of gas looking for someplace or suffering with some unspeakable illness for days when all it would take is three minutes to pull over to a gas station or pick up the phone and make an appointment with a doctor.

"One of the smartest things about smart people, men or women, is knowing-- and admitting--what they don't know. So ask for directions when you're lost, and go to the doctor when you're sick. Oh, and buckle your seat belt. Guys who don't buckle their seat belts are dumb."

Marika, 31, who has a doctorate in Asian languages from Oxford and who now runs her own consulting firm, says that guys "who try too hard to make me feel smart or interesting by making a big show of asking all these ridiculous questions about consulting and my work in Asia--when they don't know the first thing about it and don't care--are in trouble from the start."

Making it a Brain-Buster Night

Eventually you're going to find yourself browsing with the smart girl in the video store. Much as you want to see Point Break for the 14th time, the following will have her going home happier.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988): Directed by Philip Kaufman. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin. Adapted from the Milan Kundera novel--a smart girl favorite, by the way--in which a young Czech doctor (Day-Lewis) gets caught up in Sixties Czech political turmoil and caught between the two women in his life.

Why she likes it: The emotional conundrum raised by Olin's and Binoche's characters, and for Day-Lewis' hallow-cheeked intellectualism.

What to say: "I love how Kaufman's camera was observant and detached, not voyeuristic."

How to seize the moment: Ask if you can photograph her slinking around on a full-length mirror wearing only a bowler. Failing that, say that you're so madly in love with her that you'll leave your wife to be with her.

Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972): Directed by Luis Buñuel. Starring no one in particular. A dinner party for six upper-class friends provides the backdrop and starting point for a lot of surreal shit.

Why she likes it: Stinging satire on the worthlessness of cultivated society.

What to say: "Was it A.O. Scott or Pauline Kael who said this belongs to Buñuel's old age and his second childhood? Either way, I completely agree."

How to seize the moment: Suggest a romp in the woods before you grab your postflick dinner.

Rear Window (1954): Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly. A photographer (Stewart) gets laid up with a broken leg and plays Peeping Tom. Lots of commentary on "being a viewer" and "cameras" and "seeing," if you must know.

Why she likes it: The reflexive allegory on cinema and the viewer.

What to say: "Doesn't it say everything about being isolated yet overstimulated in the big city?"

How to seize the moment: Right as you're about to make your move, fling open the curtains and turn on all the lights.

Nights of Cabiria (1957): Directed by Federico Fellini. Starring Giulietta Masina. A troubled prostitute roams the streets looking for love, and nearly gets drowned in the process.

Why she likes it: The heartbreaking struggle of the heroine.

What to say about it: "You know, after this it was all downhill for Fellini."

How to seize the moment: Tough call. Whatever you do, don't suggest putting her under hypnosis for kinks.

Howards End (1992): Directed by James Ivory. Starring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter. English period drama (asleep yet?) involving a country house and two sisters with differing views about how to treat the unwashed.

Why she likes it: Bonham Carter is fiery and ill-tempered, while Thompson is steely and even-tempered. The smart girl likes to be a convincing amalgam.

What to say about it: "Forster knew how to write an ending, didn't he?"

How to seize the moment: Tell her you like her irrational, wild-haired side, too.

Smart Girl Smackdown

A cautionary tale from Jack, 30, a dotcom executive: "I dated this woman who was incredibly pretty--sort of Natalie Portman plus 10 years, six inches and 12 pounds--and ridiculously bright. She had an Ivy League degree in French literature, was an editor at a university press, decided to get her MBA and became a hotshot venture capitalist.

"We went out for about two months. I don't think a day went by that she didn't tell me how hard it had been for her to maintain relationships because her boyfriends were intimidated by her intelligence, and that she was glad that finally she'd found someone who was comfortable with her intellect. She claimed she'd never dated anyone for more than three weeks. I thought she was being dramatic. But then I found out about her dishwasher dogma.

"One night she made dinner for me at her place. Now, everybody who has a dishwasher has a dishwasher protocol, whether consciously or not. Some people like to run it after every meal, and some people think you should wait until it's completely full. There are people who rinse before loading, others who don't.

"Liza, on the other hand, had developed what she called the dishwasher dogma. She was a chess player, so she designed her dishwasher-loading approach after some Queen's Gambit or Indian Defense--some sequence of chess moves. So if the dessert plates were arrayed in the bottom shelf on the left side and the juice glasses were lined up on the top shelf on the right side and the earth was 34 degrees distant of perihelion, then you put the knives in the middle left quadrant of the silverware basket. Or something like that. She explained the basics to me, and I really thought she was being at least half funny, so I stuck a glass or something in a weird spot for fun, like underneath a colander. She took one look at that, and all in the space of about three seconds looked like she was going to weep, holler and laugh out loud. Instead, she just narrowed her eyes and said, 'You're really just not capable of getting this, are you?"'

Denial isn't a River in Singapore

There will always be some men, of course, who refuse to acknowledge their growing obsolescence. Says Louis, 28, a hedge fund analyst: "I'm genuinely fascinated by women, and have been in love several times. But they will not-- ever--be more intelligent than men. Maybe more cunning, more verbal, more interesting. Just not more intelligent."

Frankly, that kind of attitude is going to get us all into trouble. If the pattern holds, we may find ourselves addressing the same problems currently faced by Singapore. In that enlightened nation, older men and high-achieving women are being left unmarried in equal numbers. Singapore's 2000 census showed that 21 percent of men 40 to 44 years old with below secondary-level education were single, compared with 12 percent a decade ago. One Chinese man, quoted by the Straits Times newspaper, blamed it on the rise of materialistic women: "Singapore women are pragmatic. The men they want must have more money and status in society." The census showed that academic qualifications were a hindrance to marriage: About 30 percent of older women who went to college stayed single. And the hordes of educated single women are apparently a source of concern for the government, which has been trying to cajole them into marrying and reproducing for the greater social benefit. So get out there, and be all you can be--the rest is up to her.