A few years ago an old friend of mine (real not online), very successful in his field of business, decided he was going to get himself some glasses. He didn't need to wear them, there was, and as far as I know still is, absolutely nothing wrong with his vision. He just felt he needed to look a bit more intellectual in meetings, where he was often up against guys who "just looked so f***ing intelligent" with their specs on.
There's quite a lot of him in C. Moore Glootz - the bluster, the sideways point of view, the egocentricity (not that he isn't a lovely guy underneath all that!). Strangely though, some recent research reported in the UK media has suggested that not only was my old friend correct in thinking wearing glasses makes you
look smarter, but also that there may actually be a link between having poor eyesight and being intelligent.
Research commissioned by Scrivens Opticians & Hearing Care and carried out by OnePoll.com found one third believe spectacle wearers look more intellectual than those who don't have prescription eyewear. The research also found 32 per cent of glasses wearers think they are perceived 'differently' when they wear glasses.
[
The Sun, 31 January 2018]
Built to last: Gaby Quiros is smart enough to find the Corinth Canal
A new study published in the journal Nature Communications
has found that needing to wear glasses is associated with higher levels of intelligence. In the study, the largest of its kind ever conducted, researchers from the University of Edinburgh analyzed cognitive and genetic data from over 300,000 people aged between 16 and 102 that had been gathered by the UK Biobank and the Charge and Cogent consortia. Their analysis found “significant genetic overlap between general cognitive function, reaction time, and many health variables including eyesight, hypertension, and longevity”. Specifically, people who were more intelligent were almost 30% more likely to have genes which might indicate they’d need to wear glasses.
[
The Guardian, 30 May 2018]
Whether what's brought it on is the (sometime) glasses wearing Swoon of the Year
Shannon Seeley, or my recent deep exploration of
Amanda Machado's Instagram, or something else entirely, over the last couple of weeks I've been actively searching for and collecting images of bespectacled muscular beauties for FMS.
Jana Beeckman makes sure everything matches
Am I entering some kind of brawn plus brains period?
Rachael Chaskey has read at least one book
Anecdotal evidence on the forums abounds with suggestions that some muscle women are, in fact, just as "meat-headed" as (I imagine all) male BBs (to be). I've never seen FBBs as anything less than brilliantly intelligent simply because they've chosen right, chosen the correct answer if you like - a life devoted to Bodybuilding.
So I dismiss that kind of forum chatter. For one thing, there are the actually academically qualified and professionally high-achieving types (see below), but what about
Cory Everson, who plotted a career into the mainstream that remains unrivalled? What about
Denise Masino or
Lisa Cross or
Brandi Mae Akers, who have turned their talents to money-making via muscle erotica? What about
Emery Miller, chatting away to her fans on cam and managing to be engaging and apparently knowledgeable across a wide range of subjects? The most popular Female Bodybuilders, more often than not it seems to me, appeal not only to our baser physical instincts, but can also reach the largest of erogenous zones - our brains.
Doctor Alex Mossbarger
In a thread called "Female Bodybuilders with a High IQ",
Bettina Kadet (now
Salomone) (optometrist),
Kathy Connors (well-read, knew "an impressive amount" about a minor African conflict according to a head who met her),
Cerra Aredia (lawyer),
Dina Al Sabah (polyglot, BSc, MSc, MBA), Dr.
Michelle Neil, Dr.
Dena Westerfield,
Heather Darling ("accomplished" lawyer), the late great
Renee O'Neil (BSc, MSc, missile defence program director),
Chris Lydon (did Neurobiology and French, then graduated from Yale Medical School before discovering Bodybuilding), and, of course,
Kristy Hawkins (chemist) all get shout outs.
None of them - as far as I know - are famous for wearing specs though...
Neither are many of the women we've featured today, and some I was genuinely surprised to find wearing glasses -
Cass Martin, for example,
Michaela Aycock,
Ashlee Potts, and
Megan Elizabeth Colvin. Only one or two -
Paige Sandgren being the obvious example - are more commonly seen
with than without eyewear, and much of Paige's geeky-girl-next-door appeal stems from that very fact.
Do the rest of them know what my old friend worked out and the later research confirmed (sort of) - that glasses really do make you look more intelligent?
It's win-win as far as I can tell. If they really do need to wear the glasses then research shows they are likely to be have clever genes anyway. And even if they are wearing them solely for effect, well that just shows how smart they are too. Either way my suspicions are confirmed. Muscle women are as brainy as they are beautiful.
Enjoy!
