No...no, I didn't.
The “hot geek girl” debate is taking the interwebs by storm, spurred by a poorly-researched rant made by blogger Zooey Mae on The Synthesis, titled “Having Tits and Liking Spider-Man Isn’t Shocking Anymore” about one of the industry’s favorite geek girl bloggers, Jill Pantozzi. From there, a whirlwind of well-versed responses: on Newsarama by Jill herself; Bleeding Cool, The Beat by Heidi MacDonald, and others.
As someone who just this past weekend moderated a “Female Creators” panel at the Boston Comic Con, I heard a lot of this similar debate – not specifically about “hot” women, but women’s presence in the Nerdom in general (one audience member’s reaction here).
I’m glad the topic’s being discussed – I’m always psyched to see girls getting geek cred, and I love reading the comments spurned by these opinionated pieces. All this talk about the legitimacy of “hot nerdy girls” (how could hot girls really be nerds? are they just pretending, so as to get attention? etc, etc.) had me thinking, though – what about the guys?
Helloooo nurse!
Guys that are into comic books, toys, video games and other stereotypically geeky past-times have generally been dismissed as either socially inept, overweight, unattractive, and deserving of a good shove into a metal locker. But as I lurked the aisles of the Con this weekend, I had a most stunning realization – there were a LOT of good-looking, clean-looking dudes there. Guys I would even DATE (see: because I’m shallow; also see: and by date, I mean do).
Okay, so what about these weight bench-hitting, Star Wars t-shirt-wielding menfolk? Because geek culture is becoming more mainstream, are these hot dudes now springing for their true interests in public, plastic lightsabers flailing? Is this what’s going on with the “hot nerd chick” thing, too? Or are the hot nerd guys coming to the Con to pick up “hot nerd chicks”? So many questions. So much psychology. So much of “I don’t really care.”
Here’s one thing I DO care about: are geek guys throwing so much hate at these “hot nerd guys” the way women are at the “hot nerd girls”?
As Kate Cotler on Bleeding Cool wrote (and was quoted on The Beat, also), which is too good not to re-post: Being a geek girl is challenging: Not only do we have to contend with the fact that pop-culture tends to objectify and marginalize women, often reducing geek girls to being a pair of tits and an ass in a Sailor Moon or Catholic schoolgirl outfit – but, we have to also contend with girl-on-girl hate crimes such as this one… The competitive, bitchy, mean girl antics of those who aren’t secure enough in their own geeky glory to resist lashing out at those who are makes it twenty times harder for women to succeed in a male dominated culture.
I’m curious as to whether or not this type of discrimination happens in man-world, too – or if we women are just doomed by the overwhelming presence of estrogen. *starts weeping*
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Well, it’s official: I’m a spoiled brat. You all may have known this before, and my parents have been well aware of this for years – but it has reached a whole new level with this latest development: I just received an all-expenses-paid, 8-day, 7-night trip to Costa Rica from their Tourism Board.
