Smarter Than You Think

A Starry Eye- Shriya Bhatnagar

Smarter Than You Think

By: Mia Sekula

“So how do you think you did on the Bio test?” One of my friends asked another.

“Eh, it could have gone better. Did you put that the substance had proteins because Cyanide has Nitrogen?” My two friends had their regular AP Biology debrief after each test. I hadn’t taken the test yet, so I quietly sat beside them and listened to any insightful tips I might need for when I took it next period. 

“Is there anything on the test that’s not on the study guide that I should know?” I spoke during a window of silence within the conversation. Their faces contorted in confusion that I knew what they were talking about. 

“You take AP Bio?” One “friend” looked me up and down, on her way back up to my face, the shocked look in her eyes met my slightly confused gaze. 

“Haha, yeah? I take the test next period.” I spoke with a slight tone of offense underneath my awkward laugh. Yes, I take AP Biology, Honors Physics, Honors Precalculus AB, and a ton of other difficult classes. Why is that surprising to you? Why is that surprising to anyone?

“Oh. That’s a hard class, you know. What’s your grade?” My two friends exchanged a look that told me they had completely disregarded my previous comments earlier that week about how much I love science, specifically Biology. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that I’m taking AP Biology.

“Why do you seem taken aback? I have a 93.” I looked at them both. My eyebrows scrunched up, my mouth hung slightly open, and my head tilted to the side.

“Wow. I just never expected someone like you to take such a hard class. You don’t strike me as a smart type of person because. . . I mean well. . . your hair is perfect every day, and you always have your makeup done.” They turned and walked away while I looked at my dirty blonde hair with its lighter highlights and remembered how tired I looked in the mirror at 6 AM, putting on mascara, and inspecting the blemishes on my face that I held myself back from picking at. What’s wrong with looking good? That doesn’t mean I’m not smart. I shouldn’t sacrifice my looks for my knowledge. Having below-average looks doesn’t mean you aren’t smart. There are plenty of beautiful women who are insanely intelligent. Marie Curie, for example, found two new elements and became an extremely well-known scientist all around the world. She remains the only person who has won 2 separate Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields. People should recognize that girls– both in high school and everyday life–carry so much potential that goes unrecognized. They can be as bright as Marie Curie, if only they didn’t have their worth determined based on their bodies. A girl can 100% have a beautiful body and angelic face without everyone else thinking she’s a dumb teenage girl. 

Despite that, many assume that if a girl always has her hair done, makeup perfect, and works out every day, that she can’t be smart. For some reason unbeknownst to me, she can’t possibly be “pretty” and have straight A’s. Teenage girls and adult women constantly prove that they’re worth more than just a statement piece to their husbands. One night, my hand vigorously filled out questions in my AP Biology Biozone book, and worksheets of ellipses and circles from Precalculus scattered around my desk, Laufey – my favorite music artist at the time – played softly in my AirPods while I focused on the macromolecules on the page. Her new album, A Matter of Time, shuffled songs that soon earned their way onto my playlist. I sat with one foot on the ground and the other on my chair, my knee to my chest, and my mind twisting like the shape of proteins. A specific line of her song “Snow White” brought me out of the mesmerizing spell that proteins and carbohydrates had cast on me. I paused my writing as the silky, flowy, jazzy rhythm of the song blessed my ears and unlocked a realization that had been lost in my brain. “A woman’s best currency is her body, not her brain,” ( Jónsdóttir 2025). I paused, dropped my pencil, and looked around my desk and the floor at the scattered papers and binders, then looked in my mirror to my left. I’m no Marilyn Monroe, of course, but I’d say I have good facial features. I’m definitely not “ugly” per se. Suddenly, everything clicked. I’m very smart, but no one asks for my help because I don’t look like I’m smart. I know for a fact that to some people, I look like I take all CP classes with a 56% average and a 1.4 GPA, all because I take extra time out of my day that’s designated towards my appearance. I always offer my help to my classmates if they’re struggling, and they brush me off and turn to the guy with glasses in the back, quietly yet frantically scribbling down equations. They second-guess my answer when I show them how I did it, and even when I prove that I know what I’m doing, they always give me the same unsure answer: “Thanks, but I’ll just ask the teacher, this doesn’t seem right to me.”

This bias continuously follows me everywhere I go. Even in public outside of school, I’m constantly proving that I am smart and that there’s more to me than what I look like. I was out and about in downtown Wake Forest, shopping with an iced caramel latte in one hand and a bag from the previous store in the other. Someone on the sidewalk, surrounded by a group of people, was pumping a sign into the air that screamed in raging red letters, “GUESS THE BODY PART – FUTURE DOCTORS ONLY”. Coincidentally, I love the human body, and I’m very knowledgeable about it, so I tried getting his attention in hopes he would ask me a question. He paused when he caught my eye, looked me up and down, as if determining my worth based on how much skin I showed and how much makeup was on my face, if any. He shook his head after I saw reluctance and skepticism flash in his eyes and waved me off, ignoring my efforts entirely. He chose someone else who looked like a “smart person” and asked a man in blue jeans and a bland, tasteless white T-shirt what the thigh bone is called. The drab, disappointing “smart” man–whom I admittedly became envious of–nudged his black Ray Ban glasses higher onto the bridge of his nose, he smugly said, “Humerus.” Yikes. That couldn’t have been more wrong. I looked at him like he said the Earth was flat. My mouth agape, my eyes slightly squinted, and my brows furrowed. It infuriated me the way I was robbed of that experience because the man holding the sign didn’t think I knew what the femur was. I brushed it off and stayed optimistic by thinking that maybe he didn’t choose me because I looked too young, or maybe he thought I would have been wrong. Even if I was too young and even if I did get it wrong, I should have still had a chance. I shouldn’t prove people wrong because they look at me and think a certain way. I want the same opportunities that other people get, showing off their intelligence. I believe I should be taken seriously when I worked just as hard for my wits as the next person. Falling into the generic category, “the dumb teenage girl,” especially when I give them no real reason other than how I look, would be letting them win and giving in to the stereotype.

The generalization that you can only be smart if you’re ugly doesn’t only come from my peers. It’s also a mental obstacle that every teenage girl consistently works towards overcoming, but they succumb to the generalization that they are a part of the others. What people say about me often gets to my head. And if enough people say the same thing, commenting on my intelligence based on my appearance, it won’t matter how smart I think I am if all I believe I’m good for are my initial looks to others. One night, I sat at my desk, the lamp providing the only source of light in my disheveled room filled with clothes on the floor. My pink mechanical pencil weaved in, out, and around my fingers as I stared at a problem from my math class. I had a math test coming up soon, and it was crucial that I understood optimization. But I just couldn’t. It didn’t make sense to me, although it should have. I wasn’t used to math not making sense because math was my thing. I sighed, felt defeated, and pushed my chair away from the math problem that looked back at me with disappointment, so I took a break and walked around my room. I stopped in front of the mirror that watched me get ready every morning, and I thought that maybe it judged me for taking too much time out of my day. The time I spent getting ready could have been put towards understanding math concepts. I stared in disbelief, and the girl who fell into the generalization stared back. I valued my appearance over my education and made myself believe that my extra 30 minutes in the morning brushing my hair, choosing an outfit, and putting on mascara, making sure every lash was in place, evenly coated, and perfectly curled, was the reason for my B in math class. I had never gotten a B because I had always been a straight-A student, but playing this constant mental game of great test score vs. great lashes affected how I saw myself. Over the years, the confidence levels deteriorated because of it. I found myself believing what other people said about my appearance, about how I couldn’t possibly look “pretty” and be smart, so it made me believe that choosing one or the other was necessary. 

A woman’s brain and intelligence should be the defining factor; it should never come down to how much skin she shows and the amount of makeup caked onto her face. Women in the workplace are considered “pretty little things” who are only looked at, and people think “they only got the job they have because of their body”. Their level of intelligence often gets overlooked by their perfect teeth and symmetrical face. Both men and women go through the same academic rigor for the jobs they have now, yet women are the only ones people believe got to the top because of their pretty faces. 

Now and then, when “Snow White” by Laufey comes up on my playlist while I’m studying, I pause and mouth the words to that line, reminding myself that no matter how many honors and AP classes I take, and what my grade is in all of them, my worth as a human being and as a teenage girl will always be judged by my body, not my brain. Departing from that generalization is my responsibility, and it’s a confidence-crushing mindset that I refuse to fall into.

Works Cited

Jónsdóttir, Laufey. “Snow White”. A Matter Of Time, Vingolf Recordings, 2025. Spotify App