Ugly Nerds, Beautiful Nerds
Glasses, messy hair, no makeup, old-fashioned clothes and a gloomy look. Here you go, you have the perfect ugly girl that is ready for a makeover to become the pretty/stylish/sexy girl in a cliché romance comedy. I used to like this genre of movies, I think they were actually my favourite! Reflecting on why I liked these kinds of plots, I think that I saw in those kinds of makeovers a eureka moment, the answer to my own struggle as a teenager and young adult, the answer that was clearly communicated through media at that time which was; “if you are a nerd you need a transformation”. The miracle of the ugly duckling phenomenon seems quite easy, just by removing the glasses, wearing some makeup and shopping for a gorgeous outfit with high heels, you become the desirable woman.
Coming across Laura Bate’s article in the Independent; “Ugly girl: The negative messages we send to our daughters”, I realized that these kinds of images are nothing more than a dangerous stereotype. In the article, Bate mentions a fifteen-year-old-girl that writes;
“if boys don’t think I’m ‘sexy’ or ‘hot’ then I’ve failed and it doesn’t even matter if I am a doctor or writer, I’ll still feel like nothing…successful women are only considered a success if they are successful AND hot.”
Before going deeper into these reflections, let’s begin by defining who are the people labelled as “nerds”. Especially at school and university, every student knows what a nerd is, and this label refers to one of the least liked crowds at school. If you are intelligent, have good grades, study a lot, show success publicly, are shy, have few friends and are not physically attractive, you would most probably be categorized as a nerd. Being the least liked crowd means a lack of acceptance and rejection by others, and it can go as far as being bullied. According to research, this can result in serious consequences such as social isolation, loneliness, reduced self-esteem and anxiety.
I find it very interesting that studies show that high-achieving students would prefer to be popular than do well in school. Some students in mathematics, for example, decide to decrease their achievements for the fear of being called a nerd. Parents as well are afraid that their children would be labelled nerds.
I did a random equation; if we assume that a person lives on average for 70–75 years, and if this person is labelled as a nerd during their education years, that would be approximately ⅓ of their life (23–25 years). This finding was truly shocking for me because it shows how a simple adjective could ruin your whole personality, social life, career or relationships.
Teens are raised in a way that if their values are associated with adults' values of effort and achievement, they would be rejected by their classmates. But this notion leads to a paradox. When adolescents grow up, they find that, on the opposite, in the adult world, the achievement is cherished and appreciated. Let’s take a closer look at what happens among adults.
Looking at the different adaptations of Yo soy, Betty la fea TV series, we recognize the same similarities in the narrative of the classic Ugly Duckling or Cinderella storytelling. Betty, the protagonist portrays the stereotype of female nerds; being brilliant and at the same time ugly, not fashionable, hence a mockery. Due to her appearance, she struggles in finding an appropriate job that can match her skills, but later on, she transforms into a sexy woman and wins the heart of an attractive man. The equation of being smart and sexy is now resolved, just as in most of Disney’s fairy tales, the woman’s goal to happiness is to win the prince’s heart and for that, she needs to be transformed into a new state identified as the optimal, and which involve social class, sexism, beauty. This ideology leaves girls and young women confused with obstacles and norms inserted by her society and frames the female nerd in a representation that prevents her from striving forward.
The same concept can be found with male nerds in film and television. If we take the example of the American movie The Nutty Professor (1996), we see the leading character, Professor Klump, an obese nerdy scientist having problems with dating girls. Being depressed, he decides to take a miraculous chemical solution and is transformed into a slim sexy man.
This is not the first time nerds were seen as clumsy considered a one-way ticket to ostracism (exclusion from a society or group). Nerdy men have been represented on screen since the ’50s, an example of that is a movie with the same title The Nutty Professor produced in 1963. The lead role is Professor Julius Kelp, an untidy, buck-toothed, clumsy nerd. His actions and appearance, especially his buckteeth and nasal voice, set the standard for nerds for generations to come.
I would like to mention another interesting example which is the character of Lisa in the famous American series The Simpsons (1989). How nerdy girls were seen? The show was recently criticized for taking a racist and stereotypical turn with the portrayal of Lisa Simpson -– the eight-year-old, free jazz playing, Buddhist, feminist, vegetarian, moral core of the show. Lisa is one of the few Simpsons characters who aren’t apathetic to their lot in life. However, her purpose in the plot has changed through the episodes, making her more often a joke for no real reason other than to punish her. This plot developed into a mean streak of misogyny (dislike against women) and anti-intellectualism.
A dramatic change in the terminology of nerd has occurred since the rise of the computer age. Technology consumption is growing rapidly both in work and in entertainment. This goes along with the change of our relationship to the definition of the term “nerd”. Nerds have gone from social marginalization to culturally visible and powerful within a very short time. Nerd identity is undergoing a process of coolification, we can mention for example the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory (2007).
The representation of nerds and geeks is evolving in a way that is worth a closer look. The gender identity of nerdom has also changed from being limited to masculine identity to representing a wider audience of both males and females. However, the nerdy behaviour is still validated as being “real masculinity” which leaves female nerds in a peculiar position within these nerdy patterns.
School-age kids in the US are drawing women more than ever before when asked to draw “what does a scientist look like”. That’s the main conclusion of a new study that compiled information about 20,860 pictures drawn by students ages 5 to 18 over 5 decades. This fascinating research done by David Miller shows that the drawings of scientists depicted as female rose from 1% in the 1960s to approximately 34% in 2016. These numbers go in parallel with the actual percentage of women holding science jobs increasing distinctly over the last 60 years.
According to many studies, gender stereotypes in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ) domains have a direct and lifetime impact on girls and women. At a young age, girls would feel doubtful about their choices in enrolling in medicine or engineering studies since the myth says boys are smarter at math and science than girls. And, if young women would choose to pursue a career in these domains, they would be surrounded by the misleading beliefs that women tend to perform badly at work or the fact that women's salaries are much lower than men's. This will decrease their self-esteem and eventually affect their performance at work.
By changing the media image of nerd women to a more desirable image of smart, cute and very capable women, could have an extraordinary impact on teen girls as we saw earlier when more children are seeing women as capable of being scientists. A good example is a movie Hidden Figures (2016) which is the true story of a team of female African-American mathematicians in the ’60s. The female roles are portrayed as smart AND sexy.
On the same subject of how the science field is being reshaped nowadays by attracting more women, Margaret Loftus writes about how women engineers are perceived in her article Piercing, not Pocket Protectors. She mentions an interesting initiative taken by Karen Panetta, an engineering professor at Tufts University in Medford, USA. Panetta observed how children tend to draw engineers, again we recognize the same pattern mentioned earlier; glasses, buck teeth and pimples.
Around the year 2000, she founded the Nerd Girls group with the intention to debunk the stereotype of female engineers being single-minded, antisocial and anti-stylish. Members of the group are women engineering undergraduates who break the norm of engineer stereotyping.
“If you think being an engineer is sitting around being boring, you’re dead wrong,” says Panetta to a class in a primary school.
She mentions some examples of engineering students who play basketball, train for marathons, pierces their lips, or play the guitar. Panetta’s ambition is to change the way youth thinks about engineering, and hopefully, more girls would be interested to join the field and furthermore, companies would consider recruiting more females.
We can also take the example of the movie Legally Blonde (2001), Reese Witherspoon plays the role of a fashionable young woman who decides to go to law school. Since lawyers are intellectuals, she is seen as not fitting in this university context with her being a fashionista. The message is clear; you can’t be both smart and sexy (unless you are Amal Clooney). The plot then goes into the protagonist becoming a skillful lawyer, to make the audience realize that femininity doesn’t contradict intellectuality.
Speaking of ugliness and beauty, these notions have also evolved recently and we witness more awareness in the media. For example, in the new Netflix series, Betty en NY (2019), which is a continuation of Ugly Betty(2006), the word “ugly” is removed from the title because women shouldn’t have to contend with it, in their professional lives or elsewhere. In both series, the protagonist does not lament her looks, and the story is pushed forward to be about existing in two different worlds. In addition, we notice that some celebrities are trying to influence the image of sexism by posting pictures of themselves with no makeup in a way to promote the acceptance of the natural look of girls. The same applies to women's hairstyles and how curly hair has become a new trend instead of straight hair.
To conclude, I think that our aim as a community should be the acceptance and inclusion of everyone, nerds or non-nerds, no one should be judged by their interests or personalities or awkwardness. And if you are a female nerd, you should definitely know that you are beautiful and hot in your own way.
References:
Images from Google, copyrights reserved to their respective websites.
Loftus, M. (2007). Piercings, Not Pocket Protectors. ASEE Prism, 16(8), 34–37. Retrieved January 5, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24162558
González, T. (2010). IS UGLY THE NEW SEXY? The Complexities of Latina Sexuality on “Ugly Betty”. Chicana/Latina Studies, 9(2), 28–61. Retrieved January 5, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23014657
D’Amore, LM 2014, Smart chicks on screen: Representing women’s intellect in film and television, LM D’Amore (ed.), Film and history, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, viewed 5 January 2021, <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=psyh&AN=2014-43235-000&site=ehost-live>.
Rentzsch, Katrin, Astrid Schütz, and Michela Schröder-Abé. “Being Labeled “Nerd”: Factors That Influence the Social Acceptance of High-Achieving Students.” The Journal of Experimental Education 79, no. 2 (2011): 143–68. Accessed January 5, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43820984.
Miller DI, Nolla KM, Eagly AH, Uttal DH. The Development of Children’s Gender-Science Stereotypes: A Meta-analysis of 5 Decades of U.S. Draw-A-Scientist Studies. Child Development. 2018;89(6):1943–1955. doi:10.1111/cdev.13039
https://www.air.org/project/analyzing-research-gender-stereotypes-stem
Laura Bates, ‘Ugly girl’: The negative messages we send to our daughters, The Independent, 23 October 2012 10:53
The Best Movie Makeovers, Instyle, Oct 28, 2013
Do We Need Another ‘Ugly’ Betty?, El Espace, The New York Times, Feb. 14, 2019
Carl Anka, How The Simpsons mistreat its best character Lisa, 16 April 2018.
https://www.zimbio.com/The+Best+Before+And+After+Makeover+Movies
