Maxim touts its Hot 100 list as showcasing women who "scored major successes and turned tons of heads" during the year, which is true, if you count looking pouty and vacant as a major success. And while the list occasionally features women who are smart and funny - such as the controversial comic Sarah Silverman - you can bet that they are not included for their intellectual prowess.

A couple of beers later (OK, and maybe some margaritas), we came up with the idea for the Real Hot 100. We knew loads of young women in our social and professional circles who were doing amazing, creative - even potentially world-changing - work, but they did not have a place to show it off. If the Eva Longorias of the world have Maxim (and FHM and Stuff and every other damn magazine) to show off in, we decided that these women should have something too.

So we put the word out through blogs, emails, magazines and websites that we were taking nominations for a new kind of "hot list" that featured young women for all their assets, not just the ones that pop out of blouses. A list that would show off some of the impressive - although often ignored - work that women do every day.

Clearly this was an idea whose time had come. Hundreds of women from all over the US were nominated. Mothers nominated daughters, husbands nominated wives, friends nominated friends. Despite our initial fears that people would view the campaign as unnecessary, or uncool, the feedback uncovered something totally different. Robert K emailed us to say: "I have two teenage daughters and I really like your definition of 'hot'. Thanks for pointing [my daughters] in the right direction." And a 15-year-old Australian sent us a message thanking us profusely for showing her that women can be "awesome" without being half-naked.

And are they ever awesome. Two of our Real Hot 100 nominees - 26-year-old Ingrid Hu Dahl and 31-year-old Suzanne Grossman - founded the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls. The New York City day camp teaches girls to play instruments, write their own songs and generally rock out. Another nominee, 20-year-old Estefania Alves, started a Boston-based radio station that only broadcasts music and programming that respects and empowers women.

In a time when young women are said to be apathetic and vapid - pawns of a culture inundated by dumb-is-cool idols such as Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson - this list demonstrates that we are anything but. Another nominee, Leana Wen, began medical school when she was 18. Now 23, she has focused her career on helping minorities and women, and recently set up the Medical Student Disaster Relief Programme, which recruited more than 500 volunteers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

What is important about the Real Hot 100 is that it highlights the work that actual young women are doing - the ones who do not have the overwhelming desire to roll around in a sopping wet nightie. And while some of them may look good in a bikini, they know that is not all they have to offer. So there is 27-year-old Danielle Lurie, who wrote, directed and produced a film about honour killings in Turkey. There is Donna Riley, 34, a professor at Smith College's first engineering programme specifically for women. There is a political cartoonist; a Space Studies student working with Nasa; a Protestant minister in Iowa working with the homeless; the founder of Chicago's first woman-friendly sex shop. This is what young women are really like: motivated, smart, active and engaged.

It is time we got credit for something other than our cleavage then, because, let's face it, Maxim is not alone in its proclivity for rating women's "hotness". FHM has its 100 sexiest women in the world, People has its 50 most beautiful people, and countless other publications and websites such as hotornot.com use lists or rankings to judge women solely on looks. These are the world's most public beauty contests and they are everywhere.

And while the prevalence of hot lists is generally seen as a fun, harmless media ploy to sell more magazines and promote celebrity careers, their increasing social acceptability has made them into something more sordid. Teaching a generation of boys that women are only there to be ogled and ranked is a sure path to trouble. When boys do this independent of a magazine, ranking their female schoolmates by looks, we all feign shock, disgust and amazement. There was recently a big controversy here in the US about a Pennsylvania high school hot list. A group of male students generated a Top 25 list of their female peers that was vulgar, to say the least. They gave each girl a grade for her breasts, backside and face with descriptions for some added nastiness. One girl was said to be "the perfect height to suck a dick". A Latina student was described as using "perfume to keep the taco smell off of her". Another top-scoring student was held in such high regard that the boys wrote about wanting to "lather up that ass with some ketchup and dip our hot dog into it".

All of which goes beyond "boys being boys". Lists that rate women, and a culture that celebrates this kind of looks hierarchy, put a disturbing twist on already impossible beauty standards for women. And if we don't meet "hotness" expectations, we are there to be scorned. I am all for looking good, but is that seriously all people think young women have to offer? There has to be more to being "hot" than a tight ass and the ability to teeter in high heels.

I do not for a minute think that women such Paris Hilton or Jessica Simpson (well OK, maybe her) are dumb. They are smart enough to market themselves and play the ditz because they know it sells. But the re-emergence of "stupid hot" among celebrities is more than just a silly trend. Especially when we are looking to these "duh"-sexy gals as, god help us, role models. It is bad enough that girls only have sexualised images of women to look up to, but do they have to be stupid too?

Don't get me wrong, it is not that there is something bad or inherently unfeminist about looking hot and feeling sexy. I like my cleavage. But when the idea of sexy is limited to airbrushed asses and canned interview answers ("I do wish I had that gay experience, because I think women are beautiful!" as Longoria memorably commented in last year's Maxim), we are in trouble.

Isn't it time that we, and our cultural icons, said goodbye to the idea that to be sexy you must be dumb? That women's worth can be judged on a scale of one to 10? The Real Hot 100 list is just a start, but I hope it will contribute to a new wave of women who are not afraid to show how accomplished they are - and how hot that makes them.

· http://therealhot100.org/

Tough, creative, campaigning: women who change the world

It's not just US magazines that love hot lists. In the past few weeks you could have enjoyed FHM's 100 Sexiest Women issue (in which Christina Aguilera, at No 38, says, "Two women are way sexier than two men in bed", while Pamela Anderson, No 72, purrs, "I can cut glass with my nipples." Ouch). In Nuts, you'd have found "Britain's sexiest pin-ups". And Zoo has decided an occasional hot list isn't enough. We need more semi-naked women touching their breasts! Thus a 20-strong hot list each week, as well as a "girls next door" section. ("Calling all ladies! We need pictures of you naked!")

And, despite the forced levity, this incessant rating is a genuine problem. Hot lists are a constant warning that women's looks are all-important, and our main role in life is to appear sexy, titillating and unthreatening at all times.

Well, at the women's page we're bored of these lists, and so, like the Real Hot 100 list in the US, we're featuring our own roll-call of "world-changing women" here in G2. We want to showcase the most creative, exciting, campaigning and incendiary women. So, if you are someone or know someone who, say, works for social justice by day and writes poetry by night, tell us. No age or nationality restrictions. Email women@theguardian.com, explaining how you or a woman you know is changing the world, including contact details, before July 1.