The case against "too-brilliant-to-bathe"

My guest-post at The Beheld on "too brilliant to bathe" was far more controversial than I'd imagined it would be, which is to say I did not imagine it would be controversial in the least. The following issues have appeared in the comments. I've responded there as well, but because TBTB is one of the persistent motifs here at WWPD, I figured a roundup might be of interest.

 -What about race? Is TBTB just for white men? (One commenter asks, another, at the post's other location, assumes I assume this.) If I'd ignored race, it was because when one bases one's observations on anecdotal evidence, one tends to focus on what has occurred in one's own experience, and in my experience, TBTB is definitively male but not definitively white. The examples I have in mind when I think of TBTB are not exclusively white. But there's a childhood version of this where a kid who's a mess at school is taken for a genius, and lo and behold the kid in question is, I suspect, probably most often a white boy. So, sure, race enters into it.

 -TBTB doesn't actually exist, because in the fields where genius clusters (French Studies is sadly not named), all that matters is your ideas. Here, I'd respond (and did respond) by saying that there's on the one hand a situation (a utopia?) in which appearance really doesn't matter, and on the other a reality of certain fields celebrating the shabby. While this doesn't necessarily exclude shabby-looking women (although there is pressure on them as women, if not as scientists/mathematicians/philosophers not to look shabby, so there's a problem stemming from this), it does exclude women on the whole, or girls, really, who will perceive 'field X encourages the wearing of rags' to mean 'field X discourages women.' It's one thing if being a successful genius female mathematician doesn't require tasteful pink nail polish, which is lovely and liberating for women who'd rather not be bothered, but another entirely if women who feel most comfortable wearing the stuff are not taken seriously if they do.

 -What about the unfairness of having to bathe for both sexes? My feeling is, if I may summarize, that we-as-a-society are too focused on the prettiness of women, but insufficiently focused on the prettiness of men. While beauty is subjective, hygiene and presentability are far less so. A bit of effort is a nice gesture. A requirement of 24/7 effort, oppressive.

Overall, though, the weakness of my TBTB hypothesis (allow me to argue against myself) does indeed come from the fact that beauty is subjective. If we see a bunch of self-styled shabby-genius men, not all of whom are wealthy, with women who just happen to be conventionally attractive and reasonably intelligent, who's to say these women aren't with these men for their looks? Just because I wouldn't be drawn to the ogre look doesn't mean some young woman who's a dead-ringer for a young Brooke Shields is not. Maybe the problem is that men care about what others think re: their partners' looks, and would actually be attracted to TBTB women if only this were socially acceptable. Maybe this isn't at all about male entitlement, but is actually oppression of men. Who on earth knows. This is why, as long as TBTB rests on casual observation, it will never be an entirely convincing case.