Actually men are still in charge of doing most of the hiring. They won't necessarily hire the plain but brainy girl over the average but pretty one. Actually the average, pretty one stands a better chance of getting hired than the brilliant girl because men are threatened by females who are more intelligent than they are. In fact, plain, female, and brainy stands a better chance of being unemployed than any other group, particularly if she's middle aged. If she does get a job, the plain Jane is less likely to find a mentor to help her learn the ropes. People are less likely to talk to her and give her a break if she makes a mistake. Face it, men count, women don't, unless she's young and attractive. Plain and old and female are invisible. Get used to it ladies. Your brains don't count. No one wants them, and you are useless and invisible.

Sorry we missed it by a couple days.

I'm not sure if I'm happy to have her continue to reveal her stupidity so easily in post after post for its sheer entertainment value, or if I wish her the help she so obviously needs.

shorter LeCastor:

"I spend my money on something I used to get for free and that proves I'm smart."

"Someone hired me, that proves I'm smart and they're smart, too."

"I earned a degree, that proves I'm smart."

Oh, the logical fallacies that cry out for recognition whenever she types.

What on earth is up with Broadsheet and Salon? I expect anti-feminist, misogynist crap from the likes of soc.women or Free Republic, but why is Salon, which usually seems to at least pretend to be liberal, swamped with so many anti-feminist misogynists?

Maybe it's time for me to stop reading the letters in Broadsheet.

Jay

I was on these boards for a long time and took a few months off. -LeCastor

And all you learned was to pay for stuff you used to get for free.

That says all we need to know.

-- Have a nice day somewhere else.

Gosh, you're right. How stupid to contribute money to something you believe in, to a website that does excellent reporting. How stupid to understand that websites don't run on good intentions, and reporters can't feed themselves by reading insults in the Letters section. What a moron I am for paying for what i used to get for free, except that i can't get Wired or Rolling Stone for free, and $30 is a pretty fair price for a subscription to both. How silly of me to earn some money over the summer and then spend it on things I like. What a foolish attitude. Finally, i know i am so dumb with money, in spite of having a master's in finance -- that's why i'm a summer associate at an investment bank. What imbeciles they are for hiring me after all those rounds of interviews -- i really fooled them!

I agree with those whose comments expressed something less than astonishment at the "revelations" in this article. But what's worse is the way Salon passes along this specious tripe as "research". Even the subheader- "...young women desire both beauty and brains" reads as a parody of itself. Writers for the Daily Show and the Onion can just take the rest of the Summer off, 'cause Salon and Broadsheet are on the job.

Lameness alone doesn't sink this article, however. The desperate attempt on the part of marketing folks everywhere to sound "scientific", resulting in the corruption of statistics and numb confusion on the part of readers who are stuck with the task of wheat/chaff separation is the real tragedy here. Garbage "research" like this pushes the public to lump behavioral and social science research with this crap, and devalue the whole lot. Why think critically when you can just have your "news" wrapped in bubble gum and coated with a crunchy sciencey candy shell...

Young *people* feel pressure to achieve greatness in all areas. Girls picture their future selves as hot fashion models who make transatlantic flights to promote their new book on the history of French poetry, while somewhere in the background, a good-looking husband and two perfect children love and adore them. Boys picture their future selves as weight lifting executives who make transatlantic flights to meet the board of directors of their next corporate acquisition, while somewhere in the background, a good-looking wife and two perfect children love and adore them.

Both are most likely wrong: They won't get all that. The fundamental nature of the human condition is scarcity. They will have to make choices, and they will have to give up some of their dreams. If they're lucky, they will figure out what's most important and hang on to it. Most people aren't that lucky, and either drive themselves crazy trying to hang on to the impossible, or make bad choices and lose that which would have been possible. Thus comes the end of youth and innocence, and the beginning of age and cynicism (or, if you prefer, "wisdom").

I don't see how any of this is a gender issue, except to the extent that boys and girls have slightly different dreams of their future. If it's tragic that girls can't have all their dreams, why is the same fact not tragic of boys?

One of of three isn't so bad, is it?

They aren't inherent trade-offs. There is plenty of room for reasonable grooming and studying hard. And doing so is not succumbing to pressure to 'be all, do all"" as Ms. Clark-Flory opines.

Women put this anxious pressure on themselves. If all girls eschewed the effort to be 'hot like a celebrity' and just settled for looking cute and attractive, guess what - the boys will not stay away from them in droves. Girls hold the power to set the rules of the dating game but undermine themselves by descending into vicious competitions that raise the bar for 'success' to ridiculous heights, and lower the bar for other accomplishments.

I was chatting with my boyfriend recently about what constitutes a 'good body'. More women should do this. I was amazed at the broad inclusiveness of his comments. And when it came to cellulite I had to laugh out loud. "No guy cares about cellulite if you have an otherwise shapely body with some tone to it," he said. He further clarified that in all his 40 years he had never once heard a guy make a remark, negative or otherwise, about cellulilte.

Now - open a fashion rag. Any one of them. Ads for curing cellulite! False editorials that, with poisonous sweetness, urge women to '"to accept yourself for your inner beauty! But oh hey by the way here are the best exercises, the latest diet, the tanning tricks, the newest miracle cream to get rid of that ugly cellulite we've airbrushed off all of the models in the mag".

Too many women put a majority of their resources into competing for men when the truth is, if every girl in every bar next Friday was showing zero skin, wearing turtlenecks, guys would still talk to them and show an interest. The only person putting 'pressure' on women is the advertisers.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the day men feel too much pressure from Maxim, GQ and Esquire to be 'hot' and 'successful'. The editorial content in those mags is about 10% urging men to think about maximizing what they already have (which most already believe - correctly - is plenty good enough) rather than improving or changing it, and about 90% what are the neat things out there - restaurants, booze, cigars, cars, athletic gear, politicians, the occasional celebrity and yes, women - that they mind want to spend an idle half hour or so reading about. You know, for entertainment purposes. Then they forget all about it and go back to thinking they're just fine in last night's t-shirt and jeans and last year's hair cut and the same old unimproved, unadorned face they've had all their life, and focus on how their interests or skills or knowledge can be used to best succeed or at least entertain themselves. And none of this requires bellyaching that they feel so much 'pressure' to be attractive and smart. They understand, as women cannot seem to, that the two things are about as intrinsic to being happy as having arms AND legs, no need to break out in a sweat about it.