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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 5/31/2007 8:58:36 PM |
I didn't say everyone. Addressing whether or not it is "most"... okay well it's scientists I've mostly worked with, but, women included, amongst university researchers, I'd say there was a very significant difference between people who are deeply enmeshed in that environment and the way that they talk to others and people outside of that environment.
I realize that you didn't say all, but I do still think that even "most" is a stretch. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 5/31/2007 9:21:50 PM | I have read this entire topic. What a mosh pit of thought!
Sex symbols on the big and small screen are just that. Whoever calls them "intelligent" or even "smart" has no earthly idea. These people are talented actors/actresses and can memorize lines. They get take after take to get it right.
In real life you don't get 100 takes to be sexy. You get one. If the woman is turned off, no more takes, and the director says cut and toss! Besides, a good portion of actors are quite messed up on one drug or another. There is no way you can watch Tom Cruise on a TV interview and say that is normal behavior.
As far as being sexy and a brainiac, that is a tough one. There are some women that are just attracted to me and others that don't want to have anything to do with me. I have a background in Electronics Technology, Nuclear Physics, Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering. Yes, I am a brainiac.
However, I am also old enough to have gained wisdom as well. You can't gain wisdom by sitting behind the computer all the time. You actually have to go and live this thing called life. Once you go there, you find this thing called "social skills" and it is a good thing.
Star Trek conventions don't count as far as social skills are concerned.
Albert Einstein was not a very social person. Bill Gates isn't, either. They both have Asperger's Syndrome. It is a high functioning form of Autism (Rainman). Bill Gates lives in a day and age, though where it is possible to get proper training to be more social whereas Einstein didn't have that opportunity. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 5/31/2007 9:30:10 PM | Einstein was on Marilyn Monroe's list of men she wanted to sleep with.
My dad was constantly surrounded by women who wanted to hear him talk.
Women love interesting men. Smart guys are always learning interesting things.
Smart guys love discovering something no-one ever knew before. How much more interesting is that?
The Kama Sutra is a book. Looking at the pictures is not enough to understand what to do. You have to actually read it and understand it.
Why aren't smart guys sex symbols?
They were. Smart guys used to get paid very well, and gained respect from everyone. So they used to be sex symbols.
Then the computer came along, and smart guys were paid to get the computer to do their jobs. So they were considered obsolete.
Now, mass production meant there were 10 of everything, and the only growth industries left were the leisure, sports and entertainments industries. So in order to encourage respect for people in this field, the media gave the impression that being a jock is hard, and being a geek is easy. That way, you'd pay more to see them perform.
All famous actors play characters who are very intelligent men, this giving the public the impression that they ARE very intelligent, without having to do the work. Keanu Reeves, George Clooney, and anyone who has ever been in an SCi-Fi or Fantasy movie or TV programme.
FACT: Your brain uses more energy than your entire body.
Most footballers and sporting athletes train for no more than 4 hours a day.
Yet most intellectuals work for 8-16 hours a day.
Go and check out the calendars that some US universities have produced for several years of hot, sexy semi-naked men who are ALL PhD graduates.
Remember: geeks can get good at sports quite easily, jocks require incredible work to get good at science. Why do you think jocks humiliate geeks? Could it be jealousy?
ALL intellectuals are sex symbols.
Any woman who doesn't think so, thinks jocks are capable of thinking of anything more than looks and sex. Why do you think women get used by jocks so much?
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 5/31/2007 9:33:40 PM |
Albert Einstein was not a very social person. Bill Gates isn't, either. They both have Asperger's Syndrome. It is a high functioning form of Autism (Rainman). Bill Gates lives in a day and age, though where it is possible to get proper training to be more social whereas Einstein didn't have that opportunity. Autism is a highly focussed, extremely sensitive individual, present in an era where lectures are set to 50 minutes, because adults no longer have the attention span to pay attention for longer than 1 hour, ADHD is rampant, and social skills are no longer taught to anyone but a select few, who pay highly for the privilege.
Albert Einstein lived in an era where ALL intellectuals were taught proper dining etiquette and social graces. Bill Gates does not. Albert Einstein was happily married to a very young, attractive and intelligent woman BEFORE he became famous. Bill Gates had to become a billionaire before he got married. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/1/2007 6:23:48 AM | As I mentioned in my response I chose actors because the OP mentioned actors...i see no one disputed my dolph lungren intelligence and sexiness however....the acting bug called him though, took him out of that academia....brad pitt also dropped out of college to pursue acting....another highly intelligent well read guy is Billy Idol, would anyone ever think that? NO...the public doesn't see him in that light...he too dropped out of college to pursue music....people do make choices in life...so just because someone decides to pursue an ART, doesn't mean they lack intelligence...Jodie Foster went back to college, and Natalie Portman has returned...
If we're talking Einstein level intelligence...i'm sure there are some sexy scientists out there....i have a geek/nerd fetish and have dated a few...When People Magazine does their sexiest men alive issue, they include regular guys from different fields as well as celebrities and there are usually some scientists and doctors thrown in the mix..
i remember when madonna was asked years ago who the sexiest man alive was, she chose Henry Kissinger due to his intelligence...it shocked a lot of people, but I could understand her reasoning.....as someone who is intelligent and well read, i find intelligence sexy
but let's face it...smart girls get a bad rap too...no one would date me in high school because i was such a geek and straight A student and that was just so NOT cool | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/1/2007 6:35:54 AM | Intellectual is great, but attractive and intellectual is hot, hot, hot. Of course women will go for intellectuals that are good looking to us over those that are not, we're human.
Most women could care less if a cute man is a thinker, but I love it. It's a great challenge when someone is attractive in mind and body. Whoa...
Johnny Depp...theres a mix of hotness, eclecticness, and he's extremely humble, grounded and intelligent. I'd give anything to TALK to that man for a half hour over coffee, but I won't lie to you and tell you looking at him won't be awesome as well.
I really love David Duchovny - most women think I am nuts and they don't get it, but that man is EXTREMELY intelligent, and that makes him hot to me. The man never graduated, but attended Yale with honors, the only reason he didn't graduate was because he wanted to try acting and left. He can't act without you being able to tell how smart he is, to me it just oozes out of him.
I always had a thing for Michael J Fox...even now since he's been sick, he's been through a lot - he's extremely intelligent. Love listening to him talk.
Anderson Cooper, Tom Brokaw in his younger years and Peter Jennings all get my vote...
Older actors that I found handsome and intelligent included Sean Connery, Gregory Peck (before he passed), Anthony Hopkins, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood... | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/1/2007 6:46:39 AM |
I really love David Duchovny - most women think I am nuts and they don't get it, but that man is EXTREMELY intelligent, and that makes him hot to me.
I get it. I get Anderson Cooper too.
I don't know about other women, but I don't judge an actor to be intelligent because they've played someone really intelligent in a movie. I've actually never heard a theory quite so dumb either. I suspect that even the dumbest of us knows the difference between movie people and real people.
I do go by interviews & bios. How well-spoken they are. If I find out they've got degrees. Stuff like that. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/4/2007 2:16:16 PM | I get David Duchovny and Johnny Depp too.
I was following their careers, interviews, bios, because of the weak-knee effect on me those men have.
This invites me to point out that both men are well balanced in the brain department. They can feel as well
as they can think. Rare combination nowdays. We are not encouraged sinse our childhhod to feel. And this ability
is mightily repressed among majority adults. Much too much we live in the brain, and feelings - they are all in
our bodies. Even the use ( over-use, abuse) of computer is clear indication that modern humans, perhaps, disconnected
to some degree from acute sense of body. The heart, where, love resigns, is in the body. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/4/2007 3:42:09 PM | Everytime I watch a Pedigree dog food commercial I just melt...there's really nothing quite like Duchovny's voice for me. The only thing that runs a close second is Christian Slater...
I was talking to someone yesterday about Johnny Depp - I had just been to the new Pirates flick, and they asked me what women liked so much about him. I said I think most stop at his looks...but if you read up on him, watch him talk, listen to his thoughts and ideas, his creativity and his true love of the art he's involved in, you realize whoa - was that man gifted with so much more than looks and celebrity. It's a real shame to me if people miss that dimension of who he is. It makes him infinitely hotter than a lot of celebrities that just look good.
Take Brad Pitt...humanitarian? Maybe. Hot? Definitely. Picks good roles and really can act convincingly? No doubt. Fame and fortune? Totally, but to me it's not about intelligence with him. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/4/2007 6:11:46 PM | | Noam Chomsky is a HACK and WAY off on most of his rhetoric. He tries to paint Ronald Reagan as one of the worst Presidents and gives no credit to him for ending the Cold War. He's a total moron. I listened to this guy in a back and forth with Michael Medved on a syndicated radio program. He's as phony bologna as you get. Listening to this guy trying to be intellectual and put together uncorrelated facts to try and prove an assertion is akin to watching someone worse than Sanjaya trying to sing with the stars on a national stage. The guy IMO is also a few fruit loops short of a box of cereal. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/4/2007 9:02:09 PM | Talking about intellect. Emotional as well as 'brainiasm', I hope? For me, just 'freshly baked and steaming' out of academia's walls, out of intellectual enviroment, brainiacs did nothing on my sensitive attraction radar. Like dry herrings, they are unable to feel. In some way, it is emotional handicap. With all my admiration for their academic brilliance, I, as a hot-blooded, carnal and loving men female,
found the-only-brain-and-no-feeling bias is SO not enough to fall for man. The balance between mind and feelings is the answer for me. But, again, it is the opinion of one woman only... | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/4/2007 9:26:42 PM | | And, yes, please, the grey matter between the ears is the major sex organ, but then, it has to be 'grounded' in the body, which is feeling /responding/breathing entity. Otherwise, we will become the TV or pc on the thin legs with no substance to anchor into. Body speaks own language. Body never forgets. Unconscious is the body. We choose our mate out of this depth. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/4/2007 11:41:25 PM |
maybe because intellectuals aren't respectful of emotions. they aren't quite mentally balanced. they are too left brainy and not enough right brainy.
hmmm
left brain/right brain
left wing/right wing
liberal/conservative
just using my logical mind there
You must be extremely creative. | |
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AlexSB
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Joined: 6/29/2006
Msg: 64 | |
| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/4/2007 11:50:18 PM | Hahaha...
I've asked my question this numerous times...why doesn't it make a woman hot and horny when I tell her I'm a computer programmer fluent in at least half a dozen languages. Why does it not tickle her pink when I announce I finally figured out why my Linux kernel wasn't compiling?
For starters, good looking people are usually dumb(er) than uglier people probably because society allows them to be.
Secondly, most women are "tech" in the head, they like arts and psuedo-science rather than physics. So they tend to lean towards guys in bands, artists, etc. They do, afterall have more in common.
If your a braniac, you should realize this and work towards making yourself more culturally aware of your surroundings, particularlly that of the women who interest you the most.
It's pretty simple logic actually.
Have you ever seen a picture of Noam Chomsky? He's old and ugly. Brad Pitt spends a great deal of his day making himself look "sexy" so in a "life is harsh" kind of way he deserves the title, doesn't he?
Einstein smoked a pipe and was more interested in how the universe worked than how his abs appeared in the mirror. I am sure there are intelligent good looking people but I imagine they are likely the exception rather than the rule.
Intelligent Sex Symbol is such an oxymoron...military intelligence anyone? :P
Cheers :) | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/5/2007 4:15:59 AM | Dear AlexSB!
Being computer programmer - good news, and the fluent knowledge of 'at least half a dozen languages' is even better! But my point here is - how to apply those gifts. To translate the pc programms from original language? Or, to read the fiction work in the language it was created and to taste the music and creative pulse of its mover? Or, as a titilating example, to declaim to your beloved one of love sonnets by Pablo Neruda "Your breast is enough for my heart, and my wings for your freedom" in smooth-rolling, smothering Spanish by heart, and then, as effortlessly, to translate it to English?
That could be an ultimate...arrow into apple!
And towards your effectively bright and catchy phrase "Intellegent Sex Symbol is such an oxymoron...military intelligence anyone?".
Military establishment, the whole war machinery is extremely ellaborate and advanced in technology, nevertheless, it is heartless, anti-life, and anti-love in essense. The intelligence gone mad.
PS English is my fourth language. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/20/2007 8:37:25 PM |
maybe because intellectuals aren't respectful of emotions. they aren't quite mentally balanced. they are too left brainy and not enough right brainy.
Its amazing to me that anyone would say something like that! Because, let's be honest, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Robert Downey Jr....all have shown us publicly how "mentally balanced" our "sex symbols are.
As to the original question, it answers itself, they are symbols of sex, not of intellectual prowess. The media sells them to us that way. Did you know Fabio has a degree in electrical engineering? Of course not!! That's not how women want to imagine him. And, in this world of sound bytes, it has to be about appearance, you cannot convey intelligence in a 15 second sound byte. What do a woman's breasts have to do with a burger? What do a man's pecs have to do with diet coke? If you have a problem with the way the media feeds us things, we have no one to blame but ourselves, we're eating it up! Why do people who are developing lifesaving drugs or earth-saving technologies make maybe six figures, if they're lucky, but Tom Cruise can make twenty years of their salary for one lousy movie? Not to mention 50 years of the person's salary who's teaching your children!!! Once again, just my 2ยข  | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 6/20/2007 8:46:13 PM | My sister is hot for Viggo Mortensen from his writing, not his acting. She likes his political savvy and appeal. I thought that was interesting, and I remember her going gaga over some of his poetry long before he ever was a name to be recognized.
Reading his interviews on various topics makes it apparent that this is an intelligent man.
Now if only there were intelligent women making the news these days. All of the very smart Hollywood women are old enough to be my mother. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 10/9/2007 10:03:10 PM | | The conversation has gotten more and more interesting but I'm going to have to say that I do think that there are some hot intellectuals out there. Even if they are both politicians I consider them intellectuals ie: Barak Obama and Collin Powell, maybe its a power thing I dunno, also I'm going to have to agree with the person who commented on Bill Gates. Even with all that money and brains I could never find him attractive | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 10/10/2007 1:39:52 AM | | I posted a question a few days ago. Asking the women if they found the Star Fleet officer Miles O'Brian attractive. I felt sorry for him. But, Jean Luc Picard was considered sexy. Many women take many things for granted. Sadly, many don't even want to know about the hardships of men like Nikola Tesla,The Wright Brothers,Robert Goddard,Alexei Korolov, Vladimir Zworkin,William Shockly,Alexander Grahm Bell or the development of the devices and technologies they invented. These men gave us Alternating current. So that we can have the computer,tv,hair drier,rockets to get sattelites into orbit, airplanes & the telephone. Things that make life easier and more convenient. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 10/10/2007 7:45:54 AM | Well... we really can't be held responsible for having to pick from the limited choices provided by Hollywood.
If I could compile my own list from men I've met throughout my life (not necessarily in a romantic sense), at the top of that list would be Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Marion Opala. He's a short old man with a thick accent... if memory serves I believe he immigrated here from Poland. He's brilliant and outgoing, always courteous and kind. He is in his 80s now but even back when he was in his 60s and I was in my 20s listening to him lecture just turned me on.  Everyone at work knew I was fascinated by him and some would actually put fake autographed pics of him on my desk -- "To Windy, with all my devotion. Love, Marion." | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 10/10/2007 11:28:41 AM | > If women are attracted to a man's intellect, why does there seem
> to be a lack of intellectuals that are well known sex symbols?
Good question, considering the extent to which women's purchasing decisions drive what the media produces. The problem is that by definition mass marketing has to appeal to the masses. Only about 25% of the population has even so much as a college degree, and only about 5% has an advanced or professional degree, so the vast majority of the population has very little direct experience, much less daily contact, with intellectuals. Because of that, intellectuals are viewed in popular culture as freaks at best, and therefore possibly a risk to everyone. Witness the enduring popularity of the mad scientist stereotypical cartoonish character who's trying to take over the world (or destroy it) -- he's never intrinsically sexy, though he may have some appeal due to the power he wields.
And that's the key: power. Being an intellectual is not a very high status position in the larger society -- it doesn't command much power or respect (except in very limited circles) -- and so Nobel Prize winners can walk down the street and go unnoticed, which is really not such a bad thing if you want them to continue doing their thinking thing rather than having to be wasting all their time fighting off groupies with a baseball bat.
The other thing is that a male sex symbol has to be masculine, and that means a man of visible action. Intellectual activity just doesn't fit the bill there.
There will always be the occasional intellectual who gains some notoriety -- Timothy Leary and Carl Sagan come immediately to mind -- but they typically are made fun of and always have a niche appeal. These two did attract women, but it was more due to their highly visible status as a celebrity than to their being intellectuals. Leary complained of wannabe "star f*ckers", and Sagan was able to trade in his then wife for a pretty young new model. And these guys had some personality and charisma. The typical intellectual is a bit on the introverted side rather than the extraverted side, and might be totally lacking in the sort of exhibitionistic tendencies which are required of a sex symbol; in other words, most intellectuals don't crave the attention and just want to be left alone to do their work. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 10/10/2007 11:50:13 AM | | Chomsky is kind of hot, or at least he was when he was younger. So was Einstein. Heck, most intelligent men get my tongue a-waggin' as long as they aren't unbearably arrogant. It's true, though - I can't really name any sex symbols who are intellectuals, though I know Einstein at least was a lady's man. Perhaps one reason that there is a lack of intellectuals as sex symbols is that intellectuals are only sexy once they open their mouths, whereas with Brad Pitt, well, his beauty is there for all to see and thus much easier to market. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 10/10/2007 2:12:43 PM | "Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols...?"
But I'm RIGHT HERE!!! I've been posting in this for HOW LONG!!!??
Sheesh. | |
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| Lack of Intellectuals as Sex Symbols
Posted: 10/10/2007 2:18:23 PM | I think we need a calendar of intellectual men! Like the fireman ones!
Just soes we can sees! They could put their degrees on it and everything... | |
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