Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, the release of OS X Mountain Lion, Cole Hamels’ enormous contract, or your favorite beach, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.
From booth babes to cosplayers to television hosts, I’ve noticed this strange backlash towards women that are considered faux geek. Considering that many of us have nerdy hobbies that we’ve been ostracized for, it’s a little bit funny to hear about nerds complaining about women pretending to be nerds or not being nerdy enough. GeekOut’s Joe Peacock wrote a lengthy rant about ” pretty girls pretending to be geeks for attention”. My favorite part, naturally, was his take on our beloved Olivia Munn:
The growing presence of these Olivia Munn types in the geek community is creating dialog that isn’t helping anyone.
You have these models-cum-geeks like Olivia Munn and practically every FragDoll. These chicks? Not geeks. I think that their rise is due to the fact that corporations are figuring out that geeks have money, and they want it. But they can’t abide putting a typically geeky face on camera, so they hire models to act quirky and sell this marketable geekdom.
That bit about Olivia aside, Peacock’s post is interesting and passionate. There’s a lot I agree with, but there are some parts of his argument and overall sentiment that I can’t back. I also think he’s being tough on the Frag Dolls. I’ve met several of them and they were all gamer geeks. My old Reset co-host Kat Hunter was a Frag Doll and currently works for Blizzard, which makes her a geek godess. She would be insulted if someone accused her of being a faux geek…and then she’d own them in Halo.
For the most part, I’m not too bothered by women pretending to be nerds just to get attention. People pretend to be things they’re not all the time. Finding, forming, and accepting an identity is a difficult and fluid thing. One case where it does bother me is when the posers make things more difficult for the real deals. I’ve met a lot of female gamers that have felt unaccepted by some of their male counterparts. Fake geeks just make things harder for them. That makes me sad. Can’t we all just play with our lightsabers and get along?!?
