"Beauty with Brains" - offensive or not?

10 years back, I could never have imagined myself thinking along these lines. Then, to me, a statement like this would be a very nice compliment.

Call me a feminist and I probably am, considering that the above statement is usually innocuous. But doesn't anyone ever take a step back and think WHY 'beauty with brains' is thrown around so recklessly? There is an underlying implication that intelligent people are not attractive.

What further antagonizes me is " the rare combination of beauty with brains". Why is it rare? It IS possible that it is actually rare if there aren't a lot of intelligent people or a lot of attractive people on earth.

However, there ARE a lot of intelligent people on earth (even a small percentage of 6billion is a lot) and there ARE a lot of beautiful people; just ask any couple if they find each other attractive! PLUS, beauty can be artificially induced with makeup so atleast in the sphere of beauty, humans ,as a whole, do do well.

If there are a lot of intelligent people and a whole lot more good looking people then it follows that even in a small overlap, there are a lot of people.

So, atleast in my eyes, such a compliment is made just to flatter a person which by nature makes it nice with no derogatory intention. :-)

I feel much better.