There has been a lot of hubbub here and there on the net when it comes to nerds who also happen to be attractive females, and even models. As I’ve been told that I count as one of these, I felt like I needed to say my piece. True, I have written on similar topics in the past, but I think there’s a message that bears repeating: you don’t have to be what other people think you should be.

Many people are so quick to lump others into easy to manage categories. That person is a jock, that one’s a diva, over there is a goth. While it may make it easy to sort things in your mind, I believe everyone is more than a singular, stereotyped label. This is not to say that labels are a bad thing. I do consider myself a nerd, but that’s not all that I am, either. Labels sometimes help us to find and communicate with those that are like minded. As has been noted in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, once the base requirements for survival have been met, they are immediately followed by an instinct to seek out a group and gain a level of acceptance amongst your peers. This is how society survives and these are the connective tissues that keep us together and help us build meaningful relationships.

While this system of categorizing can be helpful, it also brings with it a set of problems. With labels comes stereotyping and often a narrow sense of what these titles translate to. I know a lot of people who fit into categories thought to be paradoxical, including the marriage of the categories “nerd” and “attractive female”. Nerds, by many, are still perceived as socially awkward, and often unattractive men that frequently take up residence in their mother’s basement. For a while, this may have been a pretty apt description, but as with all things, it has evolved. Nerds are no longer regulated to the outskirts of society. In fact, it seems that nowadays it’s hip to be square.

However, there is still a lack of parity between nerds when they happen to be men, versus when they happen to be women. There is this perception that women either can’t be nerds or, if they are, they are never going to be on the same level as men. Now, if you’re an attractive female and a nerd, well, that seems highly improbable to people. If they do decide you might be as nerdy as you claim, there is often a testing phase that comes next. I experienced this first hand at an event a week or so ago. I was with a group of nerdy women who also model, and we were treated to a barrage of questions intended to make us prove our “geek cred”. While a part of me found it amusing, another part found it insulting that we couldn’t be taken at our word. (Yes, I am aware some of this also occurs on the male side of things, but in my personal experience, it is far less severe.)

Sadly, this sort of trouble comes not only from the outside, but within. There is a strange tendency for people that identify with any sort of group to claim that many outsiders are “posers”. There’s a sense of exclusivity when you are part of what appears to be a minority. The issue is that until they start being more inclusive, nothing is going to change. The in-fighting only serves to schism things further. I’ve seen a lot of girl versus girl hating, and it needs to stop.

There is also the argument that you shouldn’t need to prove anything, or a self-proclamation of geekhood is a call for your legitimacy to be questioned. While, no, you don’t NEED to prove anything, there are benefits to doing so. For example, until the media realizes there are more women wanting shows like “Game of Thrones” or films like “Lord of the RIngs”, they’re going to continue to cater to male audiences first and foremost. Same goes for video games, comics, merchandising, etc. If we don’t have a voice, then these things will never change.

There is also the discussion of why can’t we all just be nerds/geeks without the male or female designation. That goes back to my last point. I’d love for everyone to live under one heading, but geeks and nerds are not a one size fits all group. I can think of many occasions where I would have gladly bought shirts for a film only to find that there was nothing being produced in a more breast conscious fashion. There have been games where I would have preferred some more gender-balanced options. There is a legitimate reason for all of the outcry from geek girls on the web.

Stereotypes are based on sweeping generalizations of one group or another, and there is usually some basis in truth. They are often deeply ingrained in the social consciousness, and they are not easy to change. However, I believe that if we work to change the perceptions and keep the conversations going, that we can be there to witness the shift.

To all of my fellow nerd/geek girls: keep talking and discussing and breaking out of the box to which you have been assigned. Only together will we see any real change.

*Please note that I use the words nerd and geek as synonyms. I know that not everyone agrees that they are the same, but to my mind they are so close as to be relatively interchangeable.

-

That’s right, yours truly was recently tapped to be a guest writer over at ThinkLeet.com. If you don’t know what that is, then maybe you should go check it out. It is chock-full of wonderful nerdliness, so get your ass over there.

You should also take a look at my first article for the site. It’s all about those pesky social networking sites we’re all so fond of.

Social Networking: Failed Communication and Pseudo-Anonymity

-

Fail.

Some may recall a blog I posted a little while back about girls and gaming. You might also recall that I mentioned that female gamers seem to be fewer in number, and are sometimes treated as oddities by their male counterparts. To upset the balance further, a company called GameCrush has decided to try and make things even more polarized by offering a service where you can PAY to play games with sexy girls. Because, you know, no sexy girls would want to play games with you unless they’re paid to do so.

From IGN.com’s article:

On GameCrush, guys are Players and girls are PlayDates. Players pay to play and PlayDates get paid to play. Guys can browse PlayDate profiles (there are currently around 1,200), view photos, and even chat with girls for free. Publicityhazard’s turn ons include vibrating controllers, for instance, and is turned off by three red lights. Once you find a gal you fancy you send her a game invite and if she accepts you get six to ten minutes of one-on-one gaming time. PlayDates have the ability to block any guy they want for any reason. When the service launches tomorrow it will only support the Xbox 360 and a few casual games hosted on the GameCrush website, but there are plans to add PlayStation 3, Wii, and World of Warcraft support as soon as possible.

How sad is that? As the subhead on TechRadar’s article reads:

Buying girls’ attention? Isn’t there a word for that?

I also have a few more words for it: eww, eww and eww with a side of eww for dipping.

Of course we all know this service will turn a profit. Then again, so does prostitution and stripping. (The chicks joining this service are just trying to pay their way through college too, right?)

According to IGN, GameCrush’s payment system was calculated to be about the price of buying a girl a drink at a bar ($8.25). This price translates to about 10 minutes of game play. The girls on this system get to keep about 60 percent of the cash they bring in, and can store it in their virtual g-string. (So I made that last part up, what’re you going to do about it?)

After completing a gaming, er, session…players can rate their “PlayDate” on things like gaming skill, hotness and flirtiness. Those with the highest ratings will receive preferred placement on the site. Remind me again how this system isn’t just a computerized pimp? All it needs is a fuzzy hat and a mean backhand.

I know no one is forcing these girls to join in, but I still find the whole thing extremely creepy and pathetic not only for the girls, but for the guys using this service. Maybe you should get off your lazy butt and go to a strip club or something, at least that way you’d be getting exercise for more than your right hand.

-

When it comes to the Monkey Island games I was pretty late to the party. I’d heard of them, but they most I’d ever played was a demo for Curse of Monkey Island when I was a kid. When the husband told me the original was being released on XBox I was interested, but I wasn’t jumping out of my skin with excitement…that is, until I started playing it.

Ryan (the husband of which I spoke earlier) had to do some errands the other day and I was sitting at home being bored. Then I remembered that Monkey Island was on the system and thought maybe I should give it a go. What ensued was a full day of me sitting around in my underwear, refusing to stop until I finished the game. I ate my lunch and dinner with the XBox controller firmly grasped in whatever hand wasn’t the conveyor of food to face. (Lovely image, I know.)

Now I’m no stranger to puzzle/adventure games. I spent a lot of time when I was younger rooted to the computer with my mum playing through tons of games. However, I don’t think I’ve ever played one before that was so hilariously funny.

Playing Monkey Island really sent me back in time. It’s been ages since I’ve played a true point-and-click adventure game. In fact, I was embarrassingly rusty when it came to some of the puzzle solving. Once I really got going though the tasks became easier for me to figure out. It was as if I had to make my brain switch gears and remember what it was like to navigate adventure game challenges.

Now I can’t really speak to the aesthetics of the newly artified game versus the original. As a newcomer to the series I found it really pleasant and I could still feel some of that old game design bleeding through. (I actually didn’t know that I could switch the game back to the original graphics until I’d already finished it.)

The most frustrating part for me were the controls. Since I was playing on an XBox it was harder to scan the screen for things I could interact with. I actually looked right past a few things I needed until Ryan would tell me to search a little harder. All in all though it wasn’t too bad.

Since finishing the game we have loaded up the PC with Curse of Monkey Island and I am working my way slowly through it. (I don’t use the PC much these days, but I can’t load the game onto my Mac.) I’ve been enjoying the game at least as much as the original.

I think I’m going to have to give Secret of Monkey Island top marks, oh, and have I mentioned that I’m selling these find leather jackets?

-

There is an app on the iPhone called Distant Shore. The whole idea of Distant Shore is that you can send out a message in a bottle and it will be received by some random individual who also has the app. One night, after a particularly good D&D session, I sent out this note:

“Do you play D&D?”

The reply I received was not what I’d expected. It said:

“Dungeons and dragons??! No I’m female.”

I found myself momentarily baffled by this response. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t play D&D, it was that the reason they cited for this was that they were female.

I can’t honestly say that this was my first encounter with gender stereotypes in the world of geek, but it’s one of the few I’ve gotten from someone of my own sex. Maybe this is because most of the female company I keep consists of other girl geeks. I just wonder what is it that keeps so many women away from the nerdy vices out there? Is it all down to stereotype? Are they genuinely disinterested in things like gaming, comic books, sci-fi, etc?

In a lot of ways I feel that I have unusual interests for a female. I love monsters and horror, I play D&D as well as WoW, I’ll quote movie lines with the best of them, I read comics, I own multiple gaming system including a XBox and PS3, and I love geeky technology. Doing these things doesn’t make me feel like less of a woman. I put on my makeup every morning, I attempt to dress myself as something other than a hobo, and to top it all off I model. Sometimes I feel as though people believe the above things cannot coexist.

When I mention that I play [insert geeky activity here] I often get replies like “Really?” along with a surprised expression. I recall waiting in line for a Jonathan Coulton concert last year and mentioning something about WoW to one of my friends. I heard an intake of breath behind me and turned to see two young guys (both the epitome of the geek stereotype) looking at me in wonder. One of them asked in astonishment “You play World of Warcraft?”. You’d have thought I’d spouted a third breast or something.

In one of my previous jobs I got chatting with a male coworker about videogames and by the time I got to talking about my preference for turn-based combat in some cases. He got down on one knee and asked if he could propose to me right then and there.

I’ve also been in situations while playing MMORPGs (for the straights, that’s Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) where someone would not take me at my word that I was actually a female playing a female character. I was all “WTF? STFU n00b!”. Okay, not really. I was genuinely irritated on some level though.

All of these experiences lead me to wonder just how many girl geeks are out there. Are we really so rare that we should receive some amount of awe and bewilderment when we are discovered? Is it something about me in particular that would make someone think I couldn’t possibly fit in the classifications of geek, nerd, or anything else of that sort? What is the answer? Maybe I’ll never figure it out.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go plan my character for a new Eberron campaign.

-