As much as I hear about this stuff being supposedly true, funnily enough I have spent most of my (sex) life considered both smart and sexy. Not a single time in my 25 years and many sexual partners have I ever felt that my intelligence was seen as a bad thing, or something that made me less attractive.

I’m not trying to say my experience is universal or anything like that, it just staggers me a little how this trope is supposed to be so common yet exists entirely outside of my personal experience and that of my peer groups.

This might sound a little intolerant I suppose, but honestly anyone who showed that attitude to me would be out the door in five seconds. I just don’t see, if you respect yourself, how you could be attracted to someone who considers your intelligence a liability. So why does this cause problems? Seems to me it’s only a problem if an intelligent woman is attracted to a man who doesn’t like female intelligence… so why do women find that attractive? Isn’t that kind of absurd? I don’t mean to sound insulting, but I would like to hear an explanation if anyone has one…

do you believe there’s a stature which, once attained, will “justify” the physical/emotional efforts involved in your existing? and, if society refuses to recognize you at this level (as “first class”, etc), is it your responsibility to change the way that society operates? i battle feelings of uselessness when i’m unable to create value – even within a community whose views i’ve redacted – but i don’t believe that these feelings are (or should be) intrinsically linked with something as ephemeral as social status.

if my intelligence has any kind of sexual appeal i’m not using it correctly. in this sense, i’ll be extremely lucky if i can create one meaningful, enduring connection with another person.

rationally, though – what i’d like to believe – is that, even if my path leads me away from the bright dreams of wealth, stature, success, fertility, etc, there are worlds of opportunity to take pleasure in nearly every aspect of reality. i think society’s goal-driven culture clouds, underrates and perhaps purposefully distorts these pleasures for the sake of increasing our productivity and improving the profitability of our economies.

which is not to say that gender stereotypes are not unfortunate, or that everyone gets “what they deserve” – just that social regard, wealth and beauty are not prerequisites for living successfully.

Tom, did you ever see the black & white movie of Topper, Cary Grant is perfection as George Kirby, I think I saw that website you are talking about, Thorne Smiths books are out of copyright protection now, I wonder why no screenwriter has produced a screenplay of The Stray Lamb or Turn and Turn and turnabout. I should do it myself. I used to know a very good screenwriter – mind you he despised his job, he still dreamed of winning a Pullitzer, I think he shot himself in Mexico about five years ago. He wrote a script called The Glass Cage and his agent sold it to Playboy who made it into a porn movie, it was probably his best pay day ever but it was the final insult for a man who regarded himself as a serious writer.

Toni, I started on Nightlife of the Gods when I was a young teenager, drawn, I’m sure, to the cutely sexy pictures of Herberrt Roese. Some years later I discovered at my parent’s winter place the trilogy book that has Topper Takes a Trip, Nightlife of the Gods and The Bishop’s Jaegers. My favorite is still Topper Takes a Trip, and I think I re-read it once a year. I’ve got a decent collection of them, most given to me from an uncle who was amazed that I knew of them at all. Somewhere on the net I even found a number of them in e-book format, which I converted to read on my Palm.

What amazes me is that even though many of the situations and dialogue are dated, there is so much that is just as fresh and … naughty almost a century after the books were written.

I’d be a Thorne Smith fangirl if I were a girl. He’s like, um, a 1920′s Douglas Adams, but a bit more risque.

Tom, I can’t believe you are a Thorne Smith fan. I started reading his books when I was 11, my first was Rain In The Doorway and then, inevitably, Topper. I still reread them constantly but lately I am most drawn to The Stray Lamb and Skin and Bones. What is your favourite? No one writes the way Mr.Smith did, I have a collection of beaten up first editions and when I open up Nightlife of the Gods, I am transported to the decadent 20′s.