Maybe Touré should stick with his day job, and by that I mean music journalism. His most recent contribution to the Daily Beast, “The Thinking Man’s Sex Symbols,” was one of the most indulgently Freudian articles written in quite a while. Apparently, he meant to evince something of the progressive aesthetics of today’s male psyche, and I believe we were supposed to be bowled over by how he was able to enumerate ten whole smart, attractive women. Wowee zowee!

Problematically, when the criteria itemized to be a “Thinking Man’s Sex Symbol” includes “not having a castrating nature” or “making me (the Thinking Man) feel like she wants to… steal my manhood,” the result is not so much an elevation of the Thinking Man’s Sex Symbol but the sharp decline of the purported Thinking Man into the depths of emasculation anxiety and egomaniacally self-referential female evaluation.

Touré writes:

A man has two minds. The lower mind is a brainless whore excited by any woman with breasts, curves, and a thong. The upper mind, which works with actual grey matter, is more persnickety. The upper mind, when employed, is moved by intelligence, success, power, self-confidence, a smart sense of humor, and, of course, not having a castrating nature.

 

And that’s the challenge. Can a woman be independent, creative, sharp, witty, strong, and self-empowering without making me feel like she wants to be a man? Ann Coulter and Judith Regan could never make the list—they’re sexy, brainy, powerful, but I feel like they secretly want to steal my manhood…

 

A TMSS is someone we imagine having great conversations with, laughing with, reveling in her success with, and getting drunk on her power with. Where Maxim girls are purposefully brainless, we look at a TMSS and say, she’s hot because she’s smart and beautiful.

 

If she’s the smartest chick in the room and she’s going home with you, what does that say about you?

What does it say about you? Well possibly not that you’re a huge catch. Perhaps it says that you’re the least attractive person in the room and therefore the least likely to have an STD. Perhaps it says that she likes men that end sentences with prepositions. Perhaps it says you're stuck in early 1990's Saved by the Bell vernacular, and she thinks that's hilarious. The possibilities are endless.

None of this is to in any way disparage the women like Zadie Smith and M.I.A. honored by Touré as sex symbols. But with a list of such remarkable women, Touré ought to have provided a more remarkable introduction. But maybe the real challenge for the Thinking Man’s Sex Symbol is not being an independent, creative, sharp, witty, strong, and self-empowering woman but being an independent, creative, sharp, witty, strong, and self-empowering woman, while avoiding the intellectual refuse that wallows in sexual insecurity.