Question (from "Hedwig"): I have a socially inept new faculty colleague who told a group of people -- again and again and again -- that she is far better looking than I. She certainly tries harder than I do, showing more cleavage and then some. Anyway, a senior faculty member said she is competing with me. (We're both untenured.)

I hate competitions of that kind. My question is: Do I just go ahead and compete? Do I ignore her like the annoying puppy she is and permit her to embarrass herself, again and again and again? Should I give her a link to your column?

Answer: Ms. Mentor's first reaction was to think "cat fight" -- and to gird herself against it. She would cite All About Eve, Working Girl, Scarlett vs. Melanie, and Heathers, and recommend Competition: A Feminist Taboo?, edited by Valerie Miner and Helen E. Longino. She would point out that Sue, the sometimes nice girl in "Carrie," is the only one who survives the carnage.

Yes, Ms. Mentor can well imagine the old Hollywood version of your story. Your new colleague would charm and seduce every powerful man on the campus, even reducing student workers to cow-eyed blithering. You would be dressed in brown and cast aside, your memorandums unanswered, your students snarling and whining. In the cafeteria, you would have to eat your lunch all by yourself while your colleague -- bathed in bright gold lighting -- would be the center of a throng of worshippers, hanging on every red-lipsticked word.

In the end, having lost everything to your golden rival, you would be trudging pitifully through the snow, clutching your raggedy coat about you. You would press your nose against a window and see "her" inside, surrounded by adoring sycophants and laughing in a merry cat-swallowed-the-canary way. She would stretch out her long, silken legs and you would see that she was sitting at your desk.

Ms. Mentor whimpers.

But that does not seem to be the movie you're in.

In academe, the roles are different. Your colleague may indeed be socially inept or misguided, if she's chosen a common social role for women -- to be sexy and flirtatious -- over the more austere professional role and demeanor expected of female Ph.Ds. Academe tends to be more Middle American in style. Crisp and clean and competent are valued more than cleavage.

It is true that good looks may get you a chili pepper for "hotness" on RateMyProfessors.com, but those are student ratings. Students don't vote on your career path. In fact, according to research by Daniel S.Hamermesh, good-looking academic men may be rated more highly by students, but the evidence about women is equivocal.

Ms. Mentor thinks the evidence against your colleague ("Inepta") is also questionable. Is she truly some kind of scheming Jezebel, bragging and flaunting, trying to vanquish you through her clothes and competitive spirit? Should you be pondering revenge?

Or is Inepta-as-catty-colleague mostly the figment of someone else's imagination, maybe someone who has seen too many movies?

Ms. Mentor ponders the evidence. Inepta reportedly "told a group of people" that she outfoxes you. But who were those people? And why the use of "again and again and again," hammering home Inepta's alleged perfidy? Who is badmouthing Inepta to you?

Ms. Mentor finds one prime suspect in your letter. There is the "senior faculty member" who claims that Inepta is competing with you.

Why is Professor Senior telling you this?

Ms. Mentor sees a different scene. Two junior professors, you and Inepta, are both fairly new to academe, and understandably anxious. The issue isn't Inepta's appearance or yours. (And in any case, Ms. Mentor is sure you look fine.) Nor is it clear that Inepta is competing with you. Even if she were, what might she be competing for?

The rewards in academe go to those who teach well, who are good department citizens and committee workers, and who do research and publication to the standard expected by their colleges. Certainly there are some unwritten rules in academe. But "Be hotter than thy colleague" is not one of them.

Ms. Mentor suspects that Professor Senior is the villain here, the one who is lurking, rumormongering, kicking up worries and dirt. Professor Senior may be a classic academic type, a meddler and crank who likes to foment discontent for his own amusement. He may be a faux mentor who, in the guise of being helpful, is making you skittish and hostile toward your peer. He is probably doing the same to Inepta ("Hedwig says you're a bimbo").

Academe harbors many talented, pot-stirring, highly verbal, and articulate meddlers. Most often they are bored, midlife associate professors who find teaching no longer interesting or challenging, and who have lost whatever ambitions they once had for research. They may have failed to get grant money, or their articles may have been repeatedly rejected for publication. They measure out their lives in passionless meetings, full of repetition and posturing. Once upon a time, they found their low salaries, troubled students, and squalid offices galvanizing, even enraging. Now such things are deadening, part of a life of quiet desperation, until . . . Hark!

Strangers have come to town. Two young, female strangers. Excitement and diversion looms. What if they're set against each other? Won't the fur fly?

That scenario is, alas, not uncommon in real life as well as in Hollywood. Cat fights are presumed -- or fomented -- whenever women work together, even though most women prefer to work harmoniously. In a crisis, as research by Laura Cousino Klein, an associate professor of biobehavioral health at Pennsylvania State University, has shown, men have the fight-or-flight response. But women bond with one another.

And so Ms. Mentor suggests bonding and cooperation with Inepta. Your instincts are good, and you should not compete. You must treat her with polite friendliness at all times, and connect her with a reliable senior mentor if you can. You may, of course, give her this column, and you can be sure that Ineptas all over the country will be receiving copies, probably anonymously, from their own cowardly colleagues.

But the best thing you can do, Ms. Mentor opines, is to invite Inepta to lunch. Make it just the two of you, publicly in the cafeteria, discussing scholarship and teaching, obviously enjoying each other's company, and showing solidarity.

The meddlers and badmouthers will have to contrive a new scenario to explain all that. But you and Inepta will both be sitting pretty.

Question: Do I have to spend my summer regurgitating my academic failures and wallowing in regret and self-loathing?

Answer: No.

Sage Readers: Last year, Ms. Mentor's readers named Richard Russo's Straight Man as the best "wickedly witty academic novel" for summer reading. This year, Ms. Mentor invites recommendations for wickedly witty nonfiction summer reading: memoirs, biographies, screeds written with verve instead of jargon. Shocking is good.

As always, Ms. Mentor welcomes survival tips for adjuncts, and miscellaneous gossip, rants, and queries for this column and for her forthcoming Ms. Mentor's Perfect Wisdom for the Academic Soul. She rarely answers letters personally, and identifying details are always disguised, as astute readers will find in her archive and in her first tome, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia.

Ms. Mentor, who never leaves her ivory tower, channels her mail via Emily Toth in the English department of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. Her Chronicle address is ms.mentor@chronicle.com

Her views do not necessarily represent those of The Chronicle.