Don’t be so smart that you can’t define ‘intellectual’
Re-examining her definition of what an intellectual is takes the sting out of being labeled one.
By Adell Shay

Intellectual (American) adjective 1a. Of or relating to the intellect. b. Rational rather than emotional. 2. Appealing to or engaging the intellect: an intellectual book; an intellectual problem. 3 a. Having or showing intellect, especially to a high degree. b. Given to activities or pursuits that requires exercise of the intellect.
— American Heritage

Intellectual (European) adjective. Having a highly developed intellect. Relating to or appealing to the intellect: children need intellectual stimulation.  Appealing to or requiring use of the intellect: the film wasn’t very intellectual, but it caught the mood of the times.
One of the great intellectuals of our time. Intellect, genius, thinker, mastermind. Adjective; his intellectual capacity mental, cerebral, cognitive, psychological; rational, abstract, conceptual, theoretical, analytical, logical, academic.
— The Oxford English Dictionary
“No you don’t,” I said firmly. No sooner had I turned to face the long, steaming mirror above the bathroom sink, when I heard the shower stop and his heavy footsteps tromp to the glass door. The glass screeched as he popped his head out.
“Don’t tell me what I think,” Jay said sharply. “If you aren’t one, who is?”
I had been leaning against the bathroom sink until that moment, gently kibitzing with my husband, Jay, while he showered.
After admonishing myself for so slowly finishing a book I was enjoying thoroughly, Reading Lolita in Tehran, I commented that author had awoken me to the fact that my notion of intellectual had no room for a much gentler, feminine shape, which is what she provided in addition to having traditional qualifications — in-depth knowledge of a narrow field of study, well-published in that field, actively meets with other like-minded person to talk about ideas — in spades.
I went on to describe how scholarly and published and well-read Azar Nafisi, the author, is, yet how focused she was in the book on whether each of her students fell in love or found personal completion or had the rich life she hoped for her. I found myself trying to reshuffle the word “intellectual” to somehow fit Nafisi into the “intellectual” paradigm in my mind. That’s when Jay called me one and I called him a liar.
“I’m nothing like an intellectual,” I retorted. “They’re smarter and more well-read and are lost in a world of fanatical characters who will design a theoretically ideal society that, if put into place, is doomed to fail.
“Intellectuals are men, always men, except for a few women who look and act like men, who survive by eating small biscuits and bottomless cups of muddy coffee.” I stopped to gasp for air; Jay grabbed his chance.
“That’s the American lie — identifying and diminishing intellectuals as those completely divorced from reality who are to be feared and despised.
“Even though our nation was founded by intellectuals, those in power have repeated a phrase until it has become believed.”
He paused, “Those who can do, do, and those who can’t do, teach.” As a teacher, I hear that comment fairly often, I thought, and each time it hurts. I see now why. It hurts because I bought into the American definition of what an intellectual is. If I want to get rid of the hurt, I have to get rid of the definition.
“What is your definition of an intellectual,” I asked Jay through the hum of the hair dryer.
Without hesitation, he replied ” It’s someone awake and developed who searches for and takes in new information then synthesizes it through the filter of current understanding. Doing so results in the arrival of a new world view. And that’s you, baby.”
He was dressed by then and leaned over to kiss me goodbye.
When he was gone, I did what I always do when my ideas and reality collide — I go to the dictionary. Interestingly enough, my first two choices for reference, American Heritage and Oxford English Dictionaries, had quite different definitions.
Later, Jay pointed out that indeed the American dictionary followed my male, unemotional, noncreative, narrowly focused unconscious definition, whereas the Oxford dictionary gave the European view — a broader, more inclusive and creative ideal going so far as to include the word “abstract” in its definition of intellectual.
The difference in definition of that one word helped me understand why my European colleagues, teachers in both two-year colleges and continuing education, are held in such higher esteem in Australia, England, New Zealand, France, and Japan.
Words are powerful. So are intellectuals.
Especially when we wear lipstick.