I WAS on a date and everything was going pretty well, when all of a sudden the guy made up some flimsy excuse and left. Confused and a little stung, I asked my flatmate the next day what had happened, considering the guy was a friend of hers.

“He thought you were too smart,” she told me.

Too smart. I’ve been told the “you’re too smart” excuse enough times to give me a complex. How on earth is someone too smart anyway?

What does “smart” even mean? Book smart? Street smart? Sheldon Cooper smart?

Being smart is a matter of perspective. Like beauty, it’s in the eye of the beholder, but I’ve never heard of someone being rejected because they’re “too pretty”. Somewhere along the way, being smart has become something negative.

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Or perhaps it’s that being pretty or sexy or popular has become more important.

For young girls, this is especially obvious. My younger cousins’ Facebook pages are littered with comments from their friends telling them how pretty they are. I have yet to see a single ‘‘you’re really smart’’.

We have shows like Australia’s Next Top Model and Keeping up with the Kardashians telling kids and adults that life will be better if they’re gorgeous. Why isn’t smart celebrated with as much verve as good looking?

media_camera Aim for the top: As Judy Garland said, always be the first-rate version of yourself.

As for me, the result of being called too smart by guys had led me to ‘‘dumbing’’ down when out on dates — being quiet when I had an opinion, pretending not to know something when I did, and generally overanalysing what I said and did. It was exhausting and ridiculous.

As the late, great Judy Garland said: ‘‘Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of second-rate version of somebody else.’’

So if being ‘‘too smart’’ means I like knowing and understanding what’s going on in the world, that I’m a geek at heart who watches too much TV and reads too many books, then yes, I am too smart. It’s a badge I’ll wear proudly.

Maybe someone will come along who doesn’t find me “too” anything, but just right.