TALK NERDY TO ME
Forget good looks — for sapiosexuals, wit and intellect are the biggest turn-ons
CHESSA Ferro looks at a photo of a rotund man wearing a homburg hat, while flashing a “V for victory” sign. “Churchill was the hottest,” she says, before going on to describe the episode of “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” that featured the late Garry Shandling scoring java with Jerry Seinfeld as “porn.”
Ferro, a 39-year-old former fashion model, can attract most any man she desires. But she selects beautiful minds over bodacious bods. “When I think of something that turns me on, I think of men and their actions,” says the artist and designer, who lives in lower Manhattan. She once dumped a model boyfriend after engaging in a permissible affair of the mind with a less than physically impressive architect. Eventually, over dinners and chats, they experienced, to steal a phrase from Patti Smith, brainiac amour. “I think of men commanding rooms or handling meetings [to get turned on]. Capacity is sexy.”
Falling for people with superior intelligence, overlooking physical attributes and finding steaminess in braininess is nothing new. But the fetish, deliberate or not, now has an identifier: sapiosexuality. Attractiveness arrives via ability, intellectualism
and even vocabulary. Merriam-Webster is considering putting “sapiosexual” — derived from the Latin word “sapiens,” which translates to “wise” — in its next edition. OkCupid now includes it as a sexual-orientation designation.
Even celebrities, while they may not use the term, display sapiosexual tendencies: Cynthia Nixon’s wife is an education activist; George Clooney fell under the spell of human-rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin; Padma Lakshmi attended many a society event on the arm of her ex-husband, novelist Salman Rushdie; and former Yankee Alex Rodriguez ditched models for tech billionaire Anne Wojcicki.
Then there’s the dating app Sapio, which launched a few months ago, angled toward those whose desires swing in the intellectual direction. With 8,000 users in the New York metro area — and availability around the world — Sapio focuses on the mind, unlike photo-based apps such as Tinder. The app measures users’ intelligence by asking them to answer deep questions: What is the meaning of life? Proudest academic accomplishment? Something you can talk about for hours? The idea is to make mental acumen tougher to fake than good looks.
Ariel Sheen, a 34-year-old creative strategist who lives in West Palm Beach, Fla., works for Sapio’s affiliated company Fractl and identifies as sapio himself. He moved to Florida after snagging a graduate degree at NYU, where he found a bounty of beautiful and intelligent women. But when he arrived south, he realized he’d have to make concessions in the looks department if he wanted an intelligent lady.
“I dated two different girls that I would not have been with if I hadn’t found their intellects so sexy,” he says.
Plus, smart dates come with advantages that go beyond clever repartee and good book recommendations.
“Intelligent people are more open to experimentation in the bedroom,” he says. “They’re more willing to satisfy partners with toys and role-playing. Some of the really beautiful [but less intelligent] girls ask if they themselves are not good enough” to provide gratification without enhancement.
Sometimes the pleasure-making moment comes in unexpected ways. Ferro dated a reconstructive surgeon and remembers when they happened upon a construction-site accident. A worker had sawed off his thumb, and the surgeon jumped into action.
“That drove me wild,” Ferro says. “A man sewing back on a body part is as capable as it gets.”
Others look for different mental attributes.
“If a man shows himself to have a bigger vocabulary than me, that’s the equivalent of a woman flashing cleav- age,” says Nica Noelle, a 30-plus-year-old pornography director for Mile High Media. “When I encounter somebody supersmart, facile, able to connect disparate things, I feel a powerful bolt of arousal.”
Born in New York City and now living in New England, Noelle passes up hunky studs for men with well-endowed minds — such as a portly, tress-challenged theoretical physicist from the UK.
“I threw myself at him!” she says. “I was so turned on by his mind that I fantasized about short, fat, bald.” She remembers the genius being overwhelmed by her entreaties and, ultimately, impossible to bed.
“Nothing [physical] matters,” she says. “I’ve gone to Harvard Square and skulked around [for a mate]. It sucks to not be attracted to people all that often. But you can’t fake the kind of intelligence I seek.”
Noelle bemoans the frustration of dating guys who lack the requisite IQ points, but she doesn’t call them out on it — unlike a Manhattanbased sapio-leaning writer who requested anonymity for professional reasons.
“I was romantically involved with a guy who wanted me to edit his book,” says the 40-something woman. “I read it and realized that it was carelessly done. I told him that he lacked the smartness to succeed at this thing he was trying to do. He responded by creating conflict. I initially thought there could really be something with this guy. Then I realized that he was just not good enough.”
Ferro, however, has her own way of vetting potential beaus.
“I flex my wit and intellect to see if they can handle it, and to see if they can handle me,” she says. “If you have a big brain, you lead with it. That’s superhot.”
“Intelligent people are more open to experimentation in the bedroom.” — Ariel Sheen