Frequently Answered Questions.
The Gender Genie. Idiot Nerd Girl Has A Posse: Taking Back The Meme ‹ Feminspire. Meet Idiot Nerd Girl.
Occasionally, Idiot Nerd Girl makes a stupid beginner’s error, or gets caught in a lie about the extent of her involvement in geek (I’m using the terms “nerd” and “geek” interchangeably here – we can fight this one out later) culture. More often, she makes the mistake of professing enthusiasm for something without being intimately familiar with or expertly skilled at it, or while approaching it from a nonstandard angle, or just flat-out liking the wrong thing. Her defenders will tell you that she is a response to “popular kids” who adopt nerd semiotics and styles in an attempt to ride along the geek chic trend without the thumb calluses to back up their Mega Man t-shirts. They’ll insist that the “girl” part is incidental, even when the characteristics and media they’re mocking are blatantly gendered, even when someone inevitably mentions the looming Fake Geek Girl menace.
There is no Idiot Nerd Boy meme. I hate the Idiot Nerd Girl meme. Bitch Ph.D. Girl-Wonder.org. Feminists, Please Stop Trying To Make Me Renounce Feminism. I was nineteen the first time I decided that feminism was a load of crap.
I was a co-president of NYU's Women in Film association, had nearly completed my minor in Women's Studies, was one of only nine women in my class at Tisch's prestigious Kanbar Institute for Film and TV, and I decided that the whole thing was kind of a giant crock that I wanted nothing to do with. Maybe it's because I grew up with a Mother who raised herself, or a paternal Grandmother who survived divorce and single-parenthood in the 1950's, but I never really bought in to the idea that women couldn't do things just because we're women. (Except possibly for peeing standing up.
That never goes well for me.) In college, the deeper I dug into the culture of "womyn with a Y" the less I wanted to do with it. I graduated from college and my "female driven" thesis film hit the festival circuit. At the risk of seeming ungrateful, I was 21 and incredibly disenfranchised by feminism. And slowly but surely, I came around. China's 'Leftover Ladies' Are Anything But. Since Scarlet He was born in 1972, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, values in China have changed.
Over lunch at a Hong Kong-style restaurant on the fifth floor of a Beijing shopping mall, she explains that of her seven best girlfriends growing up, all have gone to college and pursued careers. Only two are married, while the others have either divorced or, like her, simply never gotten around to it. “Happily never married,” the 40-year-old entrepreneur adds. “Marriage is only for having children.” In her view, it wasn’t necessarily good for relationships. Most younger women in China will still marry, but a growing number are choosing to stress education and career over finding a mate. Sipping a green tea latte at a Starbucks (SBUX) in downtown Beijing, 33-year-old Yang Jing, or Jasmine, says she still hopes to marry, but for now she values her independence and career as a corporate responsibility manager for HSBC (HBC) bank.