Toward a Taxonomy of Female Graduate Students

Our old pal Mr. Misspent recently dropped us a line, offering a suggestion for a future “post” on this humble “weblog.” The Good Mr. Misspent is currently that most unfortunate of creatures—a graduate student—and he wondered if we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” could expatiate on a wretched topic we have mentioned before: Female graduate students.

Now, we, dear reader, weren’t born yesterday. And we’re not Jimmy the Greek either. Accordingly, we fully recognize that our candid discussion of female graduate students may engender something of an uproar.

Not, we suppose, a backlash of the Death-To-Those-Who-Suggest-Muslims-Are-Violent caliber, but a backlash nonetheless. It is with much trepidation, then, that we embark on today’s humble musings.

In our defense, may we only say that approximately 47 percent of the crack young staff is made up of distaff staffers, and these ladies weren’t horribly troubled by the contents of what you are about to read? Of course, they also dig Andrew Dice Clay, so they could very well be gluttons for punishment. As well as very bad judges of humor.

Okay, okay, okay: Let the secular blasphemy begin. We’ll start by making a rather bold and generalistic claim, and then we’ll offer a few important caveats, none of which will soothe our wounded readership.

Our claim—happened upon from countless painstaking years of experience in the graduate school grind—is the following: Women go to graduate school because they are ugly. Not because they care deeply about the “transcendental signifier” or quantum physics. No, it’s because they’re miserable eyesores.

Oh, we told you we were going to cause a few heart attacks. But that’s our claim, and we’re standing by it. If you ask us, beautiful women don’t yearn to get PhDs because they can already attract copious male attention without troubling themselves to become experts in, say, soil patterns or, say, Tibetan literature. If you can marry some rich bastard just by batting your eyelashes, do you really need to write a dissertation on the uses of irony in Michel de Certau? We collectively think not.

Now, before you get all hot and bothered about our militant sexism, dear reader, ask yourself this question: Did any of the most beautiful women you knew of in college get PhDs? Aha! We’re willing to wager that the number of you answering in the affirmative is strikingly low.

As we stated above, we must present a few important caveats, if only to lower the number of death threats we’ll receive. First, we aren’t counting MBAs, JDs, and MDs, for the simple reason that we don’t consider those real graduate school degrees. There’s ample reason for anyone to go to one of these programs: Money; prestige; money; and also money. As such, lots of sexy females may very well head to, say, law school.

Second, we feel compeled to offer one slight wrinkle: Any attractive female PhD student is ineluctably married or seriously committed to a relationship upon entering her program. So, perhaps we should alter our claim to read “single girls go to graduate school because they’re ugly.” Ah, heck: We like the former locution better; it’s far more offensive.

Naturally, this begs the question: Why do guys get PhDs? If you ask us, the answer is clear: With all those ugly chicks around, they must enter graduate school because they’re stupid.