Something that’s interested me for a while is that romance readers say they value intelligence in heroines very highly, while they like their heroes to be muscular and handsome, brains–and even particular personality traits!–taking a distinct backseat to those physical attractions.

So why is it that there are five stupid heroines to every stupid hero in romance?

Sure, there are tons of heroes who are work-with-their-hands types (cowboys, anyone?), and there are many more policeman/detective/firefighter/soldier types paired with, say, a lawyer/scientist/CEO heroine. But while a nonprofessional job often means that the hero is not an intellectual in interests or pursuits, he is very rarely, well, dumb.

Heroines, on the other hand, have jobs in law, medicine, upper-level management, and the sciences with startling regularity–even in historicals, where the bluestocking is such a cliche that a heroine who cares about shoes and ballgowns than books is more of an oddity than one who crusades for women’s rights and rescuing prostitutes and orphans (whose hero is, almost inevitably, some ne’er-do-well nobleman not known to lift a finger or exercise one braincell more than his circumstances require). We’re often told how radical and intelligent these heroines are over and over again…which is a good thing, I suppose, because if we looked only at their behavior, we often never could have guessed that they weren’t blubbering idiots.

These heroines go into the dark alley. They are kidnapped by trusting the guy they already know is a lousy slimebag. They refuse to leave temporarily their houses while being hunted be a murderer because they aren’t going to be scared away from their homes, which they restored by hand/were born in/were the first places they ever called “home.” (At this point, I’m pretty much rooting for her to die and maybe teach future would-be heroines a lesson, but alas, disaster is diverted by the timely arrival of the hero, who always admires her “bravery” rather than wonders why the heck he’s panting after a nincompoop…) They go swallow a lure hook, line, and sinker, and they walk sweetly and innocently to their doom because, apparently, an inability to have a tiny shred of common sense is the true test of goodness and purity.

Yeah.

The fact is that being labeled a lawyer or docter or physicist won’t make a heroine smart–no, not even giving them that mythical state of “book smartness.” What makes a heroine smart–and therefore sympathetic–applies just as well to a hairdresser as it does to an aerospace engineer. It’s simply this: She must behave in a manner that is in keeping with rational thought. That means no running into the dark forest at night where the vampire lives because she thought she saw a cute bunny rabbit. That means not pigheadedly risking the lives of herself and her hero because she refuses to be “scared away” by a man with a gun/chainsaw/longshoreman’s hook. That means not doing insanely dangerous things just to prove someone (usually the hero) wrong. And any heroine who acts because of her “feminine intuition” tells her to should be thrown without mercy to the wolves.

Way too often, authors start with a sincere wish to create an intelligent heroine, but they go at it backwardly, taking shortcuts through their characters’ occupations or hobbies as if that description or label could replace simply making the character THINK. But it can’t. A marine biologist who wanders through the worst part of town isn’t any smarter than the secretary who does so–and, in fact, if the secretary comes from a sufficiently sheltered background and has enough bad luck–like growing up in a tiny town and having her car break down in the bad part of an unfamiliar city and then discovering that her cellphone is dead just as night is coming on–then she could be acting in a much smarter manner, given her experience, and be much more sympathetic as a result.

The problem with writing truly smart heroines is, I think, twofold. First of all, it’s a lot harder to write intelligent, insightful characters than those who act upon knee-jerk reactions and blind stubbornness. Second, smart characters won’t fall as easily into desperate situations or random conflicts as dumb ones. If the heroine doesn’t go down the dark alley, then the author must think of another, more complicated way for the hero to save her. If the heroine doesn’t throw a hissyfit when the hero doesn’t want her to ride out in the storm/collect butterflies during a blizzard/make sure her baby bird hasn’t drowned in the rushing floodwaters about to sweep away her house, then the hero and heroine have to have something else to be mad at each other about.

I think that we authors can do better than that–ALL of us. I think we can reach beyond the easy situation, the simple cliche, the blind stupidity, the arguments for the sake of arguments and find some meaningful reason for our heroes and heroines to think they hate each other’s guts and then get into a situation in which they almost die. *g* And if we stretch ourselves to create more intelligent characters, we can only win as out books gain more depth, texture, and nuance as a result of thee more complicated and sophisticated, interesting–and REAL–people that inhabit them.

So let’s hold back on the epidemiology and particle physics and take a double helping of reason, insight, and true intelligence instead. Not every heroine could use a PhD in ancient languages, but all of our leading ladies need at least a little bit of thought!

Do you sometimes find heroines lacking in the brains department? If so, what do you think is the biggest cause?