The Geek Girl Dichotomy
...so, been a while, hasn't it?
I'd like to talk today about a rather weird double standard when it comes to female characters. No, this isn't a double standard related to sex or anything...well, maybe I'm speaking too soon, aren't I? But it's not a main part of the double standard. This double standard involves how the "nerd" stereotype is written in Hollywood.
Last Thursday on The Big Bang Theory (a show which I don't watch regularly, for full disclosure), while the boys went out to try and see Raiders of the Lost Ark with never-before-seen footage (and match whits whith Whil Wheaton again...), the girls had a girls' night out which turned into an impromptu "slumber party". The girls in question are Penny (Kaley Cuoco), a non-nerd; Bernadette (Melissa Rauch), one of those "Hollywood nerds"; and Amy Farrah (Mayim Bialik), who appears to be a full-on super-nerd with Asperger's syndrome. For me, most of the hilarity of their scenes came from Amy's misunderstandings of pretty much everything she sees in the situation she's in, from making the impromptu slumber party (which she has to look up on Wikipedia just to know what happens), to not knowing how much she's upset Penny when she forces the truth out of Penny's relationship with Leonard in a game of Truth or Dare (she's way too jazzed that she "won" Truth or Dare). That's pretty much the point of the sketch.
So, yesterday, Mayim Bialik was pencilled in for several more episodes of BBT...and you can guess what happened.
The fandom...went...ape...shit.
What did they go apeshit about? Oh, she's too annoying a character. And she's just a clone of Sheldon.
It doesn't matter whether this is true, because...and here's where the double standard comes in...my hypothesis is, even if there wasn't a male on the show she could be compared to, Amy Farrah would be reviled anyway.
Whereas Sheldon Cooper is an anti-hero.
...does that sound familiar, yet again, to those of you readers who know about my little quirk? Hell yes, I'm comparing this to the reaction to Winifred of General Hospital...yet another "less than ten" geek who was reviled as being a "clone" of another character.
...but even if Senta Moses was the first such character brought on, and not brought on to be a Spinelli satellite, I think Winifred still would be hated.
Why?
Because of the double standard.
You'll note up above, there was a "Hollywood" girl nerd in the threesome: Bernadette. She's played much differently than Amy. Basically, she's played as Hollywood thinks a girl nerd is...and that actual nerds wish all girl nerds were. In most nerd circles, you'll find more Amys than Bernadettes. Nothing against Melissa Rauch, because that kind of girl nerd does exist...it's just they are rarely as cute and pretty. They're usually more plain looking, with the shame shy and mousy traits. But no one notices the shy and mousy nerd girls. They notice the nerd girl with quirks a mile wide like Mayim Bialik is playing her character...and they don't like them because of it.
Apparently, to both Hollywood and the fans, if a girl nerd is depicted as anything other than someone who is a simple glasses toss and low-cut shirt away from being a model, they're a failure. An quirky non-ten introvert nerd with a vagina is reviled, whereas a quirky non-ten introvert nerd with a penis is eaten up.
And, here's the thing...it doesn't matter whether the writer's a man or a woman...and it doesn't matter if the viewer's a man or a woman. As a largely male dominated audience in BBT and a largely female-dominated audience in GH has shown, this double standard is fully in force. Fans, for some reason, need their smart nerd girls to be attractive in some way. They just can't stand the thought that maybe, just maybe, there are girl nerds out there that can have the same sorts of qualities as guy nerds. Girl nerds can't be "quirky" without being "annoying", it seems. And that vexes me for some reason, because those sorts of characters are, to me, the most interesting.
And the fans are rejecting them...and so Hollywood is rejecting them. For the worse. I'm not saying Senta's release was the cause, but have you seen GH's ratings since last May when she was? And I think the same thing will happen to the Big Bang Theory when Amy is gone...because all of the current characters are safe, saccharine, and utterly boring.
But I guess if that's what the fans want, who am I to argue?
I'd like to talk today about a rather weird double standard when it comes to female characters. No, this isn't a double standard related to sex or anything...well, maybe I'm speaking too soon, aren't I? But it's not a main part of the double standard. This double standard involves how the "nerd" stereotype is written in Hollywood.
Last Thursday on The Big Bang Theory (a show which I don't watch regularly, for full disclosure), while the boys went out to try and see Raiders of the Lost Ark with never-before-seen footage (and match whits whith Whil Wheaton again...), the girls had a girls' night out which turned into an impromptu "slumber party". The girls in question are Penny (Kaley Cuoco), a non-nerd; Bernadette (Melissa Rauch), one of those "Hollywood nerds"; and Amy Farrah (Mayim Bialik), who appears to be a full-on super-nerd with Asperger's syndrome. For me, most of the hilarity of their scenes came from Amy's misunderstandings of pretty much everything she sees in the situation she's in, from making the impromptu slumber party (which she has to look up on Wikipedia just to know what happens), to not knowing how much she's upset Penny when she forces the truth out of Penny's relationship with Leonard in a game of Truth or Dare (she's way too jazzed that she "won" Truth or Dare). That's pretty much the point of the sketch.
So, yesterday, Mayim Bialik was pencilled in for several more episodes of BBT...and you can guess what happened.
The fandom...went...ape...shit.
What did they go apeshit about? Oh, she's too annoying a character. And she's just a clone of Sheldon.
It doesn't matter whether this is true, because...and here's where the double standard comes in...my hypothesis is, even if there wasn't a male on the show she could be compared to, Amy Farrah would be reviled anyway.
Whereas Sheldon Cooper is an anti-hero.
...does that sound familiar, yet again, to those of you readers who know about my little quirk? Hell yes, I'm comparing this to the reaction to Winifred of General Hospital...yet another "less than ten" geek who was reviled as being a "clone" of another character.
...but even if Senta Moses was the first such character brought on, and not brought on to be a Spinelli satellite, I think Winifred still would be hated.
Why?
Because of the double standard.
You'll note up above, there was a "Hollywood" girl nerd in the threesome: Bernadette. She's played much differently than Amy. Basically, she's played as Hollywood thinks a girl nerd is...and that actual nerds wish all girl nerds were. In most nerd circles, you'll find more Amys than Bernadettes. Nothing against Melissa Rauch, because that kind of girl nerd does exist...it's just they are rarely as cute and pretty. They're usually more plain looking, with the shame shy and mousy traits. But no one notices the shy and mousy nerd girls. They notice the nerd girl with quirks a mile wide like Mayim Bialik is playing her character...and they don't like them because of it.
Apparently, to both Hollywood and the fans, if a girl nerd is depicted as anything other than someone who is a simple glasses toss and low-cut shirt away from being a model, they're a failure. An quirky non-ten introvert nerd with a vagina is reviled, whereas a quirky non-ten introvert nerd with a penis is eaten up.
And, here's the thing...it doesn't matter whether the writer's a man or a woman...and it doesn't matter if the viewer's a man or a woman. As a largely male dominated audience in BBT and a largely female-dominated audience in GH has shown, this double standard is fully in force. Fans, for some reason, need their smart nerd girls to be attractive in some way. They just can't stand the thought that maybe, just maybe, there are girl nerds out there that can have the same sorts of qualities as guy nerds. Girl nerds can't be "quirky" without being "annoying", it seems. And that vexes me for some reason, because those sorts of characters are, to me, the most interesting.
And the fans are rejecting them...and so Hollywood is rejecting them. For the worse. I'm not saying Senta's release was the cause, but have you seen GH's ratings since last May when she was? And I think the same thing will happen to the Big Bang Theory when Amy is gone...because all of the current characters are safe, saccharine, and utterly boring.
But I guess if that's what the fans want, who am I to argue?