Australian author Helen Garner offered a compliment to the unbelievably talented and beautiful Dua Lipa in a recent interview that has caused a somewhat personal crisis on my part.
She described Lipa as “quietly intelligent”.
How can I be this? I worry now upon reflection that my intellect is too loud. I value intelligence and am, by a long shot, not the smartest in my family or friendship circle (which I love and think is very important), but there are oft times when I meet new people or have interactions with clients that I’ve thought, “Ah, cripes, I didn’t need to say it like that, it sounds like I’m showing off.”
Eleanor says: I had a similar chat once with a friend who moved to the United States for her PhD around the same time I did. When we went back home and met new people, they’d say: “What do you do?” We’d say: “PhD in America.” They’d say: “Cool, where?” And we’d wince about truthfully answering “Princeton”. As though saying so came with a big studio placard: applause. Sometimes we’d pretend the question was about geography and say “New Jersey” instead. But we both quickly realised that was weirder – like what, the news that we’re moderately clever is so trying for strangers back home that it’s only polite to conceal it? For heaven’s sake, with ego like that, what use is politeness?
Point of the story: letting other people see your intelligence isn’t necessarily patronising. Carefully concealing it as a favour to them sure is.
I think the heart of your question is how to reveal intelligence in a way that doesn’t feel like asserting hierarchy. And I think the heart of the answer is unsticking it from anything much about you.
There’s a way of thinking about traits such as intelligence – or musicality, athleticism or anything we possess in different measures – as gifts that run through us, that don’t really redound to our credit.
This is not how we’re taught to think about them. From when we’re knee high we get on stage and clutch certificates rewarding us, such that “aren’t you clever” can feel synonymous with “aren’t you marvellous”. But these traits are largely heritable and the product of socioeconomic fortune. Hard work is involved, of course, but everyone with any kind of talent got it partly by being lucky.
If you think of your traits as happy hits from the lottery stick, then it doesn’t feel so wincey or rude to let them show. They’re just gifts you happened to receive, and you can make life nicer and more beautiful by figuring out how to share them. Yo-Yo Ma doesn’t refuse to play so as to avoid making other people feel bad.
I think intelligence feels “quiet” in the Dua Lipa, dignified way when it has this quality of generous sharing. It’s about appreciating others’ minds, and creating more beauty and interest for others. It looks straight through to an idea, to the world, not through a lens of: “What does this say about me?”
In contrast, intelligence feels noisy and show-offy when its bearer clearly thinks it’s an exciting feature of them that they have it. That’s when it feels like the gifted child deliberately saying a long word for the grown-ups. And that’s why it can be every bit as condescending to conceal it as to reveal it: the show-off and the mealy mouthed downplayer are both making the same egotistical mistake.
Maybe the conversation between Dua Lipa and Helen Garner that got you thinking about this is also a nice place to find an answer. Impressive women, sharing their intelligence with grace and generosity. Talent turned outwards for others, not angled in to shine mainly on its owner.