Dr. $hiraz and I have been wondering why we’re not at Comic Con. We’re in awe of the innovative and peaceful Westboro counter-protest and the special Comic Con edition of Cakewrecks. It’s clear we’ve been ignoring our inner geeks for too long, and now they’re itching to go play with their friends.
Seriously, these guys are the new Dadaists.
According to popular definitions, nerds may be intelligent but geeks are excited. Neither of these tendencies has been popular, historically speaking, and silly enthusiasm was especially uncool in the dawning age of hipster irony. But now, with several formerly unpopular geeks running the world, fervent geekery is where it’s at.
Professors are expected to be nerds, not geeks. What with this being a “serious academic endeavor” and all, you’re not supposed express irrational enthusiasm about anything. So you mimic Mr. Spock, using words like “interesting” or “influential” to describe your subject. You could never say (for example) “Ovid’s poetry is so pretty it makes my unicorn-riding elf want to cry,” or “Horace is such a jackass I want to suckerpunch his elite, stanza-composing persona in the balls.”
And if you compare authors it’s in this tedious pedantic way (e.g. how many times per line Theocritus and Aratus use prolepsis) instead of following the Superman-Captain America model: “Dude, Homer would so kick Vergil’s ass. Homer actually knew how to use a spear and Vergil was such a pussy.”
Now there are academic geeks — students, mostly — and I’ve heard them have conversations like the ones above. But once you get to the professional level, you’re definitely supposed to be a nerd.
My inner geek would never shut up, though. She knew I’d been a theater geek in high school, and oh yes, even done some role playing. She felt completely justified in having opinions about whether something sucked or not. So I think I’m just going to have to admit it: I am and will always be a geek.
But there’s still the matter of wardrobe. Festal Comic Con outfits aside, everyday geek chic (drawing from nerd-dom) still requires that you be proud of wearing glasses, especially if you’re a girl, and I’m not on board with this.
In my former profession, wearing glasses wasn’t a choice, it was a professional requirement. No, really, If you were an attractive woman, you did it when you wanted to be taken seriously. Just more proof that smart people are pathetically vulnerable to fashion manipulation — good show, guys, you’ve just been duped by the same trick Julia Roberts uses to look “ugly”.
But if Aisha Tyler and Olivia Munn can be geeks, maybe things are changing. Dr. $hiraz showed me this Vanity Fair interview where Munn talks about her choice to be what she is today:
Everyone is just nicer to prettier people. I had brown ratty hair and wore polyester pants. I was like the sweaty kid who comes in and is like (out of breath) “Hey, you guys wanna play?” You learn early on, people are just more interested in you if you’re aesthetically pleasing.
Olivia Munn: Suck It Wonder Woman cover and dressed as Chun-Li for a Halloween photoshoot.
As I’ve noted before, it’s amazing how many smart people think they’re immune from that tendency. And Munn admits that being an attractive geek is difficult, noting her frustration when Jezebel (perpetrating some girl-on-girl crime IMHO) described her as “best known for putting things in her mouth.” When stuff like this happens, we can see that smart girls are still forcing other smart girls to choose sides. Not cool.
If you like to wear glasses, that’s swell. But equating them with the actual existence of someone’s intellect? That’s like saying Superman’s powers came from his blue spandex suit.
Munn as a "sexy librarian" from the same photoshoot -- seriously, what is with this glasses fetish?!?! I can see so much better with my contacts!
So if I’m going to be a geek, I think I’ll need to follow the neo-geek-chic model. Which is a long time coming — self-identifying male geeks like Seth Macfarlane and Seth Rogen have certainly cuted up (although come to think of it Rogen’s also been pulling a Julia Roberts lately) and now they own everything.
Anyway, that’s all for today because Dr. $hiraz and I have an appointment to consult about costume ideas for next year’s Comic Con. But fess up, readers — and this applies to guys and girls — have you ever pulled a Julia Roberts (or maybe a Clark Kent), slapping on glasses to hide your fabulousness? Or does wearing them make you feel sexy?
That last question is a really good one…I think for ages I used to hide behind my glasses. I’m not really sure how to explain it, but maybe I just thought I wasn’t pretty enough to show the entirity of my face, in a weird way. Nowadays, I wear my contacts when I want to ‘look pretty’, but I wear my glasses most days for practical reasons (working 8hours at a computer=dry eyes).
I think a lot of women feel that way. That’s one reason I’m a bit suspicious of geek chic insisting on glasses — I can’t help but think it reinforces the “non-pretty” feeling in some ways. For me, the work thing is the opposite: contacts let me see so much better that it really ticks me off to have to wear the glasses!
When I was a kid I thought the only Halloween costume appropriate for my glasses was a witch. But now, like the big dark scar on my chin, I tend not to think of my glasses as an accessory. It’s just there. Meh.
Sometimes, however, when I’m putting together my costume for the world I revert to the little kid and wonder what kind of costume I want and which options those glasses limit me to. Then I go to the corner shop in shapeless men’s clothes and unkempt hair and men still tell me I’m a beautiful woman and push their business cards on me, and I realize I cannot control what people see when they look at me.
I used to think I needed glasses to keep from causing a sex riot, but I’m beginning to realize there is very little that will conceal my fabulousness. My life is so hard. Alas.
Well, that’s some pretty intense fabulousness, and good for you! I’ve had that kind of experience at the corner store on occasion, but sometimes I wonder if the grubby clothes/unkempt hair thing doesn’t project an attractive sort of vulnerability in its own right. So I agree that you can’t control what people see — but what you look like can definitely influence it in some cases, even if you don’t really mean it to.
Great responses so far…my answer is yes, and yes. In the corporate world being attractive can be very limiting and stifling. People assume you’ve been sent in to swoon the clients and act as a siren. It’s not until they realize you really do have a brain behind your bangs that you’re taken seriously. So, yes. I’ve worn my glasses to bring a nerd factor to a meeting. And yes, because I am from the hot-for-teacher era, I love throwing my glasses on when people least expect it. Generally, I go without them though because I have this theory about wearing them all the time and becoming dependent…thus ruining my eyes further. So I squint a lot. That’s hot, I’m sure. (i’m not wearing them now, so please ignore any spelling mistakes.)
Yeah, sometimes it’s necessary to toe the line, as annoying as that is. But you can play with people’s expectations, too, and at least that’s better than just feeling pressured to look a certain way — and maybe better than squinting?
I wear both glasses and contacts, and I’ve found that people take me much more seriously when I’m wearing my glasses and have my hair back, rather than putting my contacts in and leaving it down. I went to a pretty fancy school, and decided halfway through my freshman year to go from blonde hair to brown. Immediately I found that teachers, TA’s, and other students began treating me like I was more intelligent, and didn’t even realize that they were doing it. So apparently blonde hair is out for geek chic as well. It only belongs to evil, pencil thin cheerleaders, of course. >exaggerated eye rollsigh< I'm ranting a trifle, but I'm just annoyed that being a feminine woman who cares about her appearance is such a disadvantage in intellectual environments. How can we change this?
Yup, that’s true (I’m blonde) and as much as I hated to do it I had to give that very advice (wear glasses, hair pulled back, no leg) to a pretty blonde gal at a networking event. What you can do…well, as I mentioned above, I think you have to suck it up at certain points, especially when you’re just starting out — though having a killer, sophisticated haircut, for example, is something that’s always a bonus for blonde looking serious.
When you’ve got a secure job, you can start dressing more like you want — no glasses, more skirts, more fitted clothing, etc. If you just accept that you’re going to cause co-workers cognitive dissonance, you can pull of a kind of “What, is there a problem here?” faux-ignorance when that disapproving little micro-expression crosses their faces, and/or steamroller over it with your own self-confidence and refusal to be taken unseriously. At least that’s what I’ve started to do. But it’s taken a while.
One of my favorite lines from The Simpsons: “She’s as bright as her hair is dark!” (when Lisa went brunette).
I am not sure about the magical world of Academia, but in the real world, I’ve found that my looks can often get me places where my brains can’t. For instance: a seat on the subway, the last beer in the cooler or even an on-the-spot job offer. Furthermore, I’ve always found it amusing when people treat me as if I’m dumber than I am, because the shock on their faces when I one-up them is more satisfying than gelato on a summer day.
As for “geekdom,” my personal statement (which got me into Harvard, Duke, Columbia, U of Chicago, Vanderbilt and UPenn Law Schools) was about the merits of playing World of Warcraft for twenty hours a week instead of joining any “real” extracurriculars. Thus, at least law schools are looking for who like to express irrational enthusiasm.
Yeah, I think law school definitely has a better sense of fun than academia. Work hard, but play hard too, and be enthusiastic about something.
It’s true that looks can get you some things brains can’t, and I can’t deny that when I’ve been broke I’ve used the ol’ “smile your way out of a ticket” ploy. But there’s always power trade there — you get something, sure, but you also make it OK for that cop to assume he’s going to get the same from every woman, and to be pissed when he doesn’t, which is a way in which gender inequality is maintained, which is why I don’t like doing it.
Same thing with shocking people who foolishly assume you’re stupid — they often manage to turn that into a nasty, sexist little grudge even though it was their own damned fault. It’s these types of consequences that make navigating the cute/smart thing difficult. There’s what happens to you individually in the moment, but there’s also the (often depressing) bigger picture.