"Fake Nerd Girls"

This topic has been coming up a lot recently, so I figure I’d throw my two cents in about it. For those unfamiliar with the phenomenon named in the title, Geekdom has been beset by an insufferable scourge. Yes, dear reader. With the increased popularity of “geeky” cultural niches has come an increased attention from the outside world, and with it has come… the fake nerd girl.

The rant about Fake Geek Girls typically begins by complaining about “Con Girls”. Not girls trying to rob you of your life savings by investing in a Chia Pet ponzi scheme, but girls that attend conventions- typically, girls at conventions dressed up as some character or another. The refrain goes that these girls actually know nothing about whatever franchise they’ve dressed up as, and are only using the Con as a middle-of-the-year, Halloween-esque excuse to dress up in fanciful, yet always slutty, clothing. Why, you might ask?

For the attention, the geek would respond!

Because according to this particular part of the complaint, Con Girls aren’t actually hot enough to hack it as bona fide Hot Girls on the outside; they’re just banking on the stereotype of geeks being inept with women to buoy their attractiveness up a couple pegs by comparison to girls these guys would “typically” have a shot at. (This is known as being “Con Hot”, and it is not a compliment).

Now- I’ll ignore for a moment the fact that the dudes complaining about this probably have no idea how much of a “true fan” Girl X actually is or isn’t, whether or not she’s dressed up. Book, cover, yadda yadda. I want to take a look at where this argument comes from, and then expose it for what it really is.

So where does it come from? Different people might have different underlying reasons for their aversion to “fake nerd girls”, be they dressed up or not: some might believe girls are using their bodies just for personal attention (as mentioned above) or professional attention (to sell some product or other); some male geeks might believe that a more attractive girl couldn’t possibly be interested in something so traditionally anathema to sex appeal, and so any interaction with an attractive woman in the context of their niche is more an act of pity on her part (and “I don’t need your goddamned pity!”) than a true display of her interest in the subject material.

I could go on ad nauseum; the potential reasons behind the accusations of someone being a “fake” geek girl are legion, but they all boil down to the same thing. I’ll list three statements, each progressively closer to the root of the issue; keep score at home and see when you pick up on it.

1.  “These fake geek chicks are terrible! They’re not even into this stuff because they like it, they’re into it for attention. I liked this Con more before they started coming.”
2. “These people are terrible! They’re not even into this stuff. I liked this more before they started coming.” 
3. “Ugh, this is terrible. Those people aren’t even real fans. This was much cooler before it was popular.”

That’s right, my fellow geeks. If you’ve claimed that you liked being a geek before your niche of choice became as mainstream, then you’ve moved out of Geektown and into that one town that everyone in America names with equal venom- Hipsterville.

Ponder that for a moment. Roll that word around in your head. Turn thee, Geekvolio, and look upon thy Hipster-y death!

See, back in the “glory days” I think some of our brothers yearn for- the days of (and here’s my street cred) reading Unearthed Arcana around Gygax’s basement, postulating on what would one day become the THAC0 system or some shit- liking things like comics (sorry, graphic novels) or fantasy card games was decidedly unpopular. But geeks loved them anyway, and would wax poetic about their +3 Dirk of Attentionslaying to anyone with ears and a pulse. That’s what made geeks so geeky. There was no question that professing their love for their niche would get them a first class ticket to a swirly; they professed anyway. And they would try to turn you to the Geek Side too, even if your expression was something akin to a root canal patient’s without anesthesia. I should know. If I had a dollar for every time I used D&D lingo in a middle school English class, trying to sound cool? I could probably pay off my student loans.

Point is- that’s what a good geek is supposed to do. He or she is supposed to look at another person and go, “Ears? Check! Pulse? Check! HEY DO YOU HAVE A MOMENT to talk about our Shiny Lord and Savior, Malcolm Reynolds?”

(One hopes there’s at least some context to this conversation. Bringing it up as a non sequitur typically sounds about as irritating as someone who can’t stop talking about how much they bench pressed- society tends to call those people guidos, or in the root latin, goddamn fucking tools… but I digress). Point is, a good geek is supposed to be a good spokesperson for their niche, thereby increasing the number of people who dig what they dig, and bettering humanity as a whole.

These Anti-“Fake Geek Girl” dudes don’t do that. They don’t see Random Girl dressed as Tifa and think, “Y’know, I should go see if she’s played any of the other FF games”. They don’t see the shared interest as a conversation starter. They see her as a threat of some sort, as if there’s some planetary stockpile of Geekiness, and they have to hoard as much of it as they can to survive the coming football season. I suspect that some of it derives from “I liked this hobby as a form of relaxation, but now with hot girls around I can’t relax anymore, so I’ll be a twat and hope they leave.”

…This is almost always followed a few hours if not minutes later with, “God, girls always go for the assholes. Why won't one talk to me?"

And of course, some of the Anti-“Fake Geek Girl” Guys (Contest Time: Someone come up with a clever acronym for that) are just Hipsters, pure and simple.

But fuck them.

Because fuck Hipsters.

As a really quick aside- I firmly believe that anyone who’s super into something is a geek. Video games, cars, food, weight lifting, vintage issues of Cat Fancy- whatever. If you get real tooled up about something to the point where you have to bite your own tongue to keep yourself from gushing about it out of context again, welcome to Geektown, here’s your pocket protector. But nontraditional kinds of geeks- people into cars, sports, and so forth- they’ve had fangirls tag along to their various big-ticket events for decades! When was the last time you heard a car buff start bitching about all the scantily-clad women that Honda brought with them to the last bike show? Or, when was the last time you heard your local armchair quarterback complain that he doesn’t think the Cowboys cheerleaders don’t really appreciate the game?

I suppose this is all a ranty and fairly roundabout way of saying shut up and accept the company, man! Whether it’s girls, guys, whoever. The more the merrier. And if you disagree, then…

Well, I’ll say it again.

Fuck Hipsters.

Modesty Is For People Who Suck (Some Links NSFW)

"Modesty Is For People Who Suck" is a line that I came up with a couple years ago. I find it funny that I’m the one spreading it around work, and it’s a bit of a joke to me- but in other ways, it isn’t. I decided to write about its underlying components of confidence versus conceit today, through an examination of the portrayal of womens’ sexuality by the media.

I don’t think I’d be causing anyone to double-take if I informed you that a lot of fashion outlets tend to base their ideal of beauty around a slender figure. Runway models have been stereotyped as under-eaters, bulimics or anorexics for years- often with a fair amount of truth behind it. If you look at any female-targeted weight loss plan, many of the “after” pictures have women that have gone down to a size 2, if not a size 0.

The fact that there even IS a “size zero” is ridiculous in my mind. Zero implies a lack of value; a complete absence of whatever it is you’re measuring. Even the most emaciated waistline still has some size to it, and therefore, it cannot be zero. Claiming the size of a dress as such is baffling to me- claiming that you’d aspire to be that size, or the implication that you should be that size, is even stranger. Your waistline should be non-existent? Give me a break.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic. My point is this: Confidence has a lot to do with how someone looks. That’s not going to change any time soon. But, it also has a lot to do with how you perceive yourself to look. Change your perception, and even if you don’t shed a single pound, you can believe that you look better. This, in turn, can make you carry yourself better (after all, if you think you’re hot shit, why wouldn’t you? You’re hot shit, after all)- and when you carry yourself like you’re worth a million dollars, other people are more likely to treat you better. At the very least they’re typically less likely to mess with you, because someone who is self-confident is less likely to put up with heinous bullshit.

Enter the small but growing plus-sized movement. This is a movement you might have seen here and there; Glamour had a cover a while back with a bunch of “plus” sized models without Photoshopping, or you might have stumbled onto the Curve Appeal Tumblr, or any other venue that extols the bigger girls. These are good things, in my opinion, because they instill confidence in a group of people whose confidence is more likely to be somewhat eroded from the constant assault on their forms that the media hits them with.

It instills confidence- but not conceit.

There’s a big difference. Confidence is knowing who you are. Confidence is knowing your path and walking it, demanding equality when it is due, and doing your thing with swagger even when the haters go and hate. Conceit, on the other hand, makes you believe that you are better than everyone else, and it makes you believe that you deserve special treatment.

The “plus size is awesome” movement doesn’t go around telling girls that they’re better than skinny girls- which is what a lot of fashion outlets have been telling their readers, albeit in reverse; that skinny is better than big. The plus-size movement has been telling girls that they are at their best when they look like they ought to, not when they try to mash their bodies into a shape eight sizes too small. Is there a difference between being a big, curvy girl and being legitimately unhealthy in your size? Of course, and people need to be real with themselves; if you’re lazy and eat like shit, or if you have a glandular problem (or whatever else), you need to take extra care of yourself. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.

We’re talking about confidence, which could be summed up by the line, “A little swagger is a good thing”. A buddy of mine used to say that. “Modesty is for people who suck” represents conceit, though I say it jokingly (usually). So keep your swagger, people, be you male or female, size 0 (ugh) or size 10.