Growing up, somewhere along the line, I got the thought lodged in my head that girls couldn’t be pretty AND smart – that I couldn’t be pretty and smart.

It wasn’t necessarily some paralysing thing at the forefront of my mind day and night, but more like a looming shadow that would come by every now and again just to check up on me. And so, from a tender age I decided if I had to choose I’d be smart; books before boys, make-up and stylish clothes. I’m still like that today.

I never quite told myself that because I chose brains I was ugly…in my mind it meant I just wasn’t very pretty. That coupled with the not uncommon pre-TEEN and teenage insecurities related to being well-liked and fitting in, you can imagine just how problematic the belief was.

This belief is unfortunately treated like some sort of golden rule with next to no exceptions. On the off chance that you’re a girl and you happen to be both pretty and smart there’s this fervent belief that something else has to disqualify you; maybe you’re not all that pretty or maybe you’re not all that smart…something has to be wrong with you in some way.

The thing about allowing young girls to grow up thinking this is that it’s harmful and just plain wrong – and unfortunately this belief is all too common.

Why else would we have the belief that models and pageant girls are largely unintelligent or disconnected from important sociocultural issues and truths? Let’s get real here and own up to the fact that when a lot of us settle in to watch Miss World or Miss Universe or Miss whatever, we expect – nay, anticipate – pretty girls in swimsuits and evening wear with nothing to add except good looks, a nice walk and maybe a decent talent. And that’s not cool.

That said, it’s no big deal if you’re into make-up or fashion or cooking or anything people unfortunately tend to label as trivial, and you don’t know anything about the Chinese economy or what E = mc

²

means.

means. It’s equally okay if you can’t follow the conversation about blending and contouring or colour palettes and you’d just rather do some programming. What really matters is that we stop buying into the lie that we can’t be pretty and smart in equal parts if we so choose, and that we stop propagating it and forcing the concept on other girls.

Girls can be pretty and they can be smart too.