This Charmless Woman

Did credentialism leave me rizzless?

“What deference was shown to someone who is educated. Studying was considered a ploy used by the smartest kids to avoid hard work. How can I explain to this woman—I thought—that from the age of six I’ve been a slave to letters and numbers, that my mood depends on the success of their combinations, that the joy of having done well is rare, unstable, that it lasts an hour, an afternoon, a night?”

― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

When I was in 6th grade I had a teacher who seemed to give out grades arbitrarily and played favorites and fumbled students’ mental health issues so badly that he basically enabled child endangerment. In America, the customer is always right. Karens will try to get teachers to change their kids’ grades because they’re the ones who pay taxes. But with my upbringing, the teacher was always right and my failure was purely my result. How do you avoid failure? By getting better grades. How do you get better grades? By trying harder and trying to figure out what the teacher wants from the assignment and following those rules. But if you were outgoing and athletic, all you needed was to be yourself. I certainly wasn’t going to brand myself as an athlete with my labored 8 minute and 10 second-mile and wins as a “junior novice” tennis player when one of my classmates was a nationally-ranked player. Moreover, I hated myself and wished myself dead if only my death wouldn’t be an emotional burden on my loved ones who loved me out of begrudging obligation. I watched It’s a Wonderful Life and found myself much worse than George Bailey. Therefore, the world would have been better off without me. Of course, I thought that was normal, natural for a Christian. If someone was confident and liked themselves, I saw it as a sign of sinful arrogance or ignorance. So being “myself” wouldn’t get me anywhere. I just had to try and fail to win a game of credentialism where the standards were unclear and I had no coaching.  

Maybe the idea that charisma could take you further than accomplishments alone was supposed to be a helpful lesson. It’s also good to teach kids that there is value in being active. It just kinda disgusted me that the teacher created a culture where everyone was trying to get his attention and his favor. The kids around me, it seemed, were acting so fake. And the teacher, I realize now, was trying too hard to act cool. I was among the best tetherball players in the grade but since it wasn’t a “legitimate” sport like football, it got me nowhere.¹ But perhaps it kept me from being outright unfavored, since he did take some time out of playing football with the favorites and the tryhards to observe the kids at their different activities. Still, if you weren’t in his eyes “naturally likable” or at least trying to play by his standards, there was a palpable annoyance he directed towards you. He didn’t even try to empathize with you. The good graces of an unjust ruler meant little to me. I would move onto middle school. Even though I was never the first prize winner, I wished to be again embraced by the comparatively even hand of credentialism.

Putting sixth grade aside, credentialism was the dominating value in my world of academic and professional strivers. “Charm” felt largely meaningless beyond being able to prove that you weren’t some kind of psychopath in a college admissions interview and maintaining friends.

People say “smart girls wish they were hot” or “hot girls want to be seen as smart.” Intelligence and beauty are factors that very easily and often coexist. Many assume that good looks make people lazy and content. I disagree. I subscribe to the theory that beauty encourages people to become wildly ambitious because once they receive a taste of positive validation, they keep craving more and accumulate skills to receive even more positive attention. It has the potential to be a multiplier effect.

To that end, the real binary isn't "hot" vs "smart." It's "charisma" vs "credentials." The real issue about "smart girls wish they were hot" is not about looks but about how no one has ever tested their charms so they never learned to “act hot.” Institutions like public schools reward “smart people,” or at least kids who get good grades. Smart people get everything they want--little prizes, Pizza Hut reading log coupons, full recess because they finish their work earlier, fewer chores (depending on the household)--and it has nothing to do with their behavior or their ability to win people over. It’s just because they follow the rules, and rule-following is considered an inherent good. Therefore, following the rules is always good and using other means to receive special treatment is bad because it’s “undeserved.” Following the rules is the only way you are allowed to “earn” nice things. 

This is the Tracy Flick mentality. Through the power of her will and intelligence she gets everything she wants, gets the best grades, the presidency of every club, and she wants more because her ambition and work ethic entitles her to it. She thinks she deserves to win class president because what? She’d be “the best” at it? No one likes her! What vision does she have for the school beyond exploiting every opportunity to pad her own resume? Let the people’s champion win! But she wouldn’t see it that way. It pisses her off to see the privileged, charming and likable win. Think Cher Horowitz negotiating with her teachers to round up her grades. She may not have gotten the highest scores, but wheedling the teacher into bumping her grades got her to the same place as the students who did. Tracy would have torn that girl up with a machete. 

After I read Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados, I was pleased by its breezy pace and witty observations and a tiny bit hurt by what it magnified in me personally. I read the novel several months after its debut, when the starter pack-ification of literary fiction with emotionally detached female protagonists was at a peak. Happy Hour, of course was the aperol spritz and girl dinner and managing to get both of those paid for and having nothing but lip gloss in your vintage beaded bag. 

I might be what people call “penny wise and experience foolish.” There are a lot of things I haven’t done and a lot of things I haven’t taken advantage of. I realize the differences between myself and the delightful, frivolous party girls in the novel. I have never truly had to be resourceful, live by the skin of my teeth, rely on my charms alone, and on top of that manage to have fun. That is a form of work I am unaccustomed to. I grew up in the suburbs. I have no street smarts, so I cope by being cautious and looking over my shoulder. I have very little joie de vivre, yet I have very little idea of how much I am being “punished” for it. I had no idea, really, that there was a world of special favors that people give you for being charming. I’ve never tried to win over anyone I didn’t already like. Perhaps the fact that I’ve never tried indicates that I’ve assumed I had the luxury of getting what I wanted through the “right” means. It’s a privilege to not have to endear myself to everyone I meet because I might need a favor from them at one point. If anything, I’m at the place where I desperately want to give favors because I want people to like me. And I want to give people the opportunity to help me so they can feel good about themselves and feel closer to me. 

I sometimes feel that charm and risk aversion cannot coexist. I am doomed to be responsible because I am too “old” now (26) and the costs of being irresponsible outweigh the short-term benefits. I am so risk averse because I’ve never known what it’s like to lack. I prize my material comfort to the point that my handbag often surpasses five pounds because I can’t stand having a stuffy nose, excess sun, phone battery under 35%, being thirsty for even five minutes, being cold in a store, etc. It’s not very cute. But I’m prepared. Perhaps the “credentialist’s” surest path to charm is generosity. Be the person who has the tampons and Tylenol. Don’t ask to be venmo’ed back. The recovering rizzless credentialist can rebrand as the “mom friend” with the Mary Poppins bag. I am not a “mom friend” but a “neurotic overpacker.” But if you got cocktail sauce on your skirt and I’m the one with the Tide pen, who’s going to know the difference? 

1.  I realize my school played with one distinct “illegitimate” rule. You are not traditionally supposed to catch the ball, but this possibly made the game safer because it was slowed down a little and a tad more graceful. We didn’t often punch or hit the ball. We basically held the ball near the top and threw it using our whole body weight.