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Sexy Nerd Girl Fanaticism

Nerd Girls The fanaticism surrounding “sexy nerds” is not new, however, it is more publicized and when I really got down to thinking about it, what exactly does it take to be a “sexy” nerd? And why are all of videos, blog posts and news stories I’m finding on the subject all making sure that you know that they’re talking about girls when they’re talking about intelligent people? And, as an obvious sidenote, why are they always referring to intelligent females as “girls?”

Wikipedia defines nerd girls as women who often wear eyeglasses with large lenses and thick frames, dresses unfashionably, wears her hair in unfashionable styles, is not popular, is not considered conventionally attractive, is shy and may be somewhat socially inept in groups and may be slightly overweight or notably thin.

The new sex appeal of nerdy women raises a few red flags for me. When the media refers to intelligent women as girls, I simply think that they are making light of the progress women have had over the years when it comes to earning degrees in fields most dominated by men. I say earning degrees in these fields instead of working in these fields because a recent Center for Work-Life Policy found that 52% of women who hold jobs in science and engineering fields, fields most dominated by men, leave their jobs after experiencing harassment on the job and more than half believing they needed to “act like a man” in order to succeed.

The Wikipedia definition, as it may have been true years ago and in the world of comic book and graphic novel cliches, such as Ghost World which was also turned into a movie starring Thora Birch, stereotypes in television and mostly reality television shows are alive and well, such as the nerd guy stereotypes and dumb blond, bimbo brunette stereotypes in Beauty and the Geek. Now, television reality shows are taking another turn–In the direction of nerd girls who have brains and are hot; imagine that.

There are a group of girls at Tufts University who are called The Nerd Girls and are also the subject of a new, reality television show. The girls of The Nerd Girls are engineer students who are changing the stereotype of what “nerds” of the female variety should look like. The Nerd Girls, as seen in a video done on who they are, what they do and how cool it is when they talk to men and receive an array of different responses, typically enjoy the fact that they are seen as hot chicks but know themselves that there is a lot more to them than just that and indeed, they have the intellect. But are they simply reveling in the fact that while they are attractive and while they are intelligent, are they feeding into society’s stereotypes and sexism of women? Are they contributing to this toxic way of thinking by being part of a reality television show that says “Look at these hot babes and you’re never going to guess what makes them so special!” By being surprised that women have looks and brains and making a reality show about how surprising it is that women have looks and brains, it makes me quite sad. I’m also quite glad that The Nerd Girls are engineers and not say, web designers because their website is quite hideous.

When it comes to “sexy nerd girls,” do men really find that, and everything about having a “sexy nerd” girlfriend attractive? You cannot simply put some thick, black rimmed glasses on an attractive woman and call her a “nerd.” Taking some anecdotes from my own life, how hot is it when your girlfriend wastes more time than you playing video games? How hot is it when the happiest day in a month in your girlfriend’s life is not when you made her a romantic dinner or when the two of you cuddled on the couch watching movies for hours, but when the new FireFox came out? How hot is it when you’re talking for literally 5 minutes or even more and your girlfriend looks up from her computer, the screen nothing but text documents of hundreds of lines of code and asks “Were you saying something?”

With the majority of the blogosphere and social networking sites being dominated by women, “nerd girls” are not hard to come by in the least and quite a few of them are indeed attractive; however, we have hit a road block when being tech and gadget savvy and being sexy at the same time is considered shocking. Intelligent women are attractive, so why make such a big deal about it?

July 5th, 2008 · Posted in media, television ·

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