10 Reasons Geeky Ladies Are No Longer a Boner Killer (and Is This a Good Thing?)
Posted at 5:00 AM Jan 20, 2010
By Kiala Kazebee
 |
First, can we have a little discussion about this My Life As Liz bullshit on MTV? The unscripted/scripted reality show about a "quirky" girl named Liz who just doesn't fit in with her high school peers because she's, you know, adorable and indie rock and life must be so hard for her because she's got a bunch of dude friends who worship the ground her little elfin Oxfords walk on and no one understands her except for you know, everyone in the fucking new vogue of nerd adoration who wants to be her.
I have so many problems with this show. For one, it pretends to be about nerds and nerd culture, but the queen nerd on the show is a supermodel in Urban Outfitters togs. Why not focus on the regular looking kid who maybe doesn't fit into any one mold? Is this too confusing for Americans? I'm speaking about the average high school student who isn't necessarily popular or unpopular and hasn't quite figured out who they are yet. We can't all be Andy from Pretty in Pink or Cindy Mancini from Can't Buy Me Love. Some of us (most of us) fall somewhere in-between cheerleader and hipster, biding our time while our bodies and minds slowly form a layered, nuanced, and authentic personality.
What I am saying is the massive uprising of the geeky chick is souring on me a little. As a "geeky chick" myself, I don't necessarily feel comfortable with this label. I play video games, but I don't play MMORPGs. There is absolutely nothing wrong with MMORPGS, I just prefer a different type of game play. I like comic books, but I prefer high fantasy and really thick, complicated science fiction. I have a hard time finding stuff to wear at Goodwill and thrift stores, so I end up shopping at Delia's like every other girl in the world. I like getting my hair did. I also like looking up obscure fan fic photoshoots for Bioshock 2 and watching Drunk History on Youtube. I guess to mass media these things make me "quirky" or whatever, but I think they just make me..well...me. Slapping a nerd label on someone like myself, or on MTV's Liz, or any woman on Twitter who knows what an elf is or who, you know, has her own personality not wholly influenced by the marketing machine makes America feel safe, I suppose.
And what makes America feel even safer is rounding up all these "geeky" ladies and sticking them in the "sexy" holding tank and oh so much rejoicing happens because being sexy is all we ever wanted! No longer do we make dudes puke at the mere sight of us and our cardigan sweaters! We've truly entered an era where guys all around the world are seeking a hot geeky fantasy woman (provided she looks exactly like all the other hot geeky fantasy women on the internet and doesn't gain weight or have a big nose or whatever) so HUZZFUCKINGZZAH?
To be perfectly honest I'm not even sure how I feel about the whole mess, so I've written this list is to help decipher who, why and what has made nerdettes so totally boneable (for better or worse) recently. Feel free to argue with me in the comments. I know I would if I were you.
 |
Rivers Cuomo basically fetishized the nerdy proto-vintage hipster. I, in fact,used to be married to someone who looked just like Buddy Holly and yes, I may have resembled Mary Tyler Moore (by way of Dorothy Parker), so what I am saying is, I blame Weezer for more than the up-with-nerds message of the '90s, but also for the failure of my first marriage.
9. Angela Chase
We are all Angela Chase or at least we are on the inside. On the outside, we may be loud and spazzy and kind of chunky and impulsive, but on the inside we feel so many slow Angela Chase feelings for Jordan Catalano, and these feelings mean so much that the very act of feeling our slow inside Angela Chase feelings profoundly changes the way people around us look at the world. Also, we are all virgins. Forever. Frozen Embryos if you will. (See what I did there?)
 |
8. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy Summers experienced every single bit of teen angst and peer shunning and college confusion all while saving the world from the Apocalypse and several Big Bads and the Sinister Minister and eyeless monks and the terrible over-acting that was Glory. And she did it most of the time wearing really cute boots. THUMBS FUCKING UP.
7. Summer Glau
My friend and Portland Mercury film editor Erik Henriksen and I have a running joke that the best way to request a press pass to any nerd event is to include the phrase "OMG I LOVE YOU SUMMER GLAU OMG !!!!11111!" Actually, this started out as a joke, but I've been using it for real and it works like a charm. See you guys at Comic-con!!!11!!
6. iJustine
I don't understand this phenomena and I really don't care enough to google it but I just did and GAH MY EYES OH IT BUUUURNS. She's like the weather girl of the internet. Thumbs down to you iJustine. That is, unless we meet in person and you turn out to be really sweet and we become best friends and braid each others' hair and swap jeans. This wouldn't be the first time I compromised my belief system for a good head massage or a pair of Sevens.
Comments
Oh...Felicia Day and Tina Fey in one post.....I'm all warm and fuzzy inside........
Posted 01/20/2010 at 07:31:06 AMFirst off, about the booth babes, I'm not sure if you ever went to E3, but the primary audience was the male geek. So, since it is a marketing convention, the goal is to sell the attendees on the product. And T and A sells entirely too well to that crowd. So, booth babes.
Second, I think I'm the only one alive that doesn't like Felicia Day. I didn't like her in Dr. Horrible, and I don't like The Guild.
And why on Earth are you watching MTV anyways?
P.S. My phone wanted to replace MTV with MTG. I consider that a good thing.
Posted 01/20/2010 at 09:32:21 AMI love it when people in general don't let gender or sexual orientation stereotypes get in the way of their true personalities! Ladies and gay guys who love geeky stuff and are not afraid to show it earn my respect!
Posted 01/20/2010 at 10:23:43 AMI love it when people in general don't let gender or sexual orientation stereotypes get in the way of their true personalities! Ladies and gay guys who love geeky stuff and are not afraid to show it earn my respect!
Posted 01/20/2010 at 10:24:58 AM"even though you had to kind of tape them together because the rings are made for Orks or something"
Which is why I made mine into a necklace. How girly am I?
Posted 01/20/2010 at 10:45:40 AMI'm not up on most superhero comics' universes. But now that I know I have the same first and middle names as an X-(wo)Man? (Katherine Anne)
I'm starting to wonder if I was really named after my great-grandma...
Posted 01/20/2010 at 12:27:36 PM"And T and A sells entirely too well to that crowd."
I really *really* wish this nonsense would go away. Geeks are no more or less susceptible to sexy marketing than any other demographic. There's no exploitation of the female form you can find in geek culture that you can't find an equivalent of in mainstream culture. Sexism is not limited to geekery.
At any rate, fun list. Felicia Day is probably still a little too new to say she's had a big impact, but Buffy, Weezer, Kitty Pryde, and Tina Fay are definitely important.
Posted 01/20/2010 at 12:33:04 PMKitty Pryde! Most comic-book heroines used to annoy me as a kid. They seemed so marketed towards men, even if they were supposedly feminist (*cough* Wonder Woman). But as girl without ginormous boobs, I adored Kitty Pryde. Actually a lot of the jocky, BMOC guys I know at school love the majority of women on this list. So yeah, that line between geeky/non-geeky is definitely blurred.
Posted 01/20/2010 at 12:43:21 PMHi, I love geeky girls and I know how different they can be. So we'll go through this craze...in the end, the real geeks, well they were the geeks before this and will be after this. Just remember that part
Posted 01/20/2010 at 12:49:53 PMMy husband loves Weezer. We're fucked.
Posted 01/20/2010 at 01:04:10 PMHOT.
Posted 01/20/2010 at 01:08:18 PMAlex, let me rephrase:
"T and A is the only female option in that crowd"
And while yes, you'll see it in all advertising, other advertising at least will occasionally give women some credit. I can't recall the last time a female character in a geek-oriented advertisement wasn't based on the attractiveness of the woman.
Posted 01/20/2010 at 01:52:07 PMAnd girls who knit.
Right?
Did I do that right?
Knitting is totally geeky. We use math. And repetitive hand motions. It's like playing video games, except not.
Posted 01/20/2010 at 03:55:45 PMAngela Chase FTW!! :)
Posted 01/20/2010 at 06:09:40 PMKnitting is cool, especially when you knit Cthulu or Jayne's special cap. I like origami because I can do it in front of my computer when I'm watching Star Trek.
Posted 01/20/2010 at 06:48:32 PMHELL YES
Posted 01/20/2010 at 06:52:33 PMto everything you said.
HMMM....
My sister's a big fan of Star Wars and plays Modern Warfare on a daily basis, but yet when I get all excited about Star Trek and Smallville, she calls ME a geek! lol One thing's for sure, we both love X-Men! I think the T&A thing will be around forever, no matter what. But nowadays guys do LIKE girls who share these same types of interests (or not) and accept them regardless. Hey, I married a jock! Ha!
Posted 01/20/2010 at 07:00:15 PMForgot one AMAZING female superhero-Dust. She's one of the newer generation of X-Men, but I admire the fact that she's 1) overtly Muslim, 2) is one of the few new-gen that actually have character depth, and 3) her power is FRIKKIN' awesome!
Posted 01/21/2010 at 08:32:01 AM