Imagine this scene from a comedy: a group of female friends sit around smoking a bowl and working on the Wikipedia page for Lord of the Rings. Their fashion sense is decidedly iconoclastic and several sport thick-rimmed glasses. Without a trace of self-consciousness, they have a hilariously ribald discussion on the relative traits of elves and orcs.
Awesome as it is, you’ll never see this scene onscreen. No mainstream movie or TV series would dare group so many female nerds together, or celebrate them so unabashedly.
The story is not the same for dorks with Y chromosomes, who are have recently ascended to It-boy status thanks to the success of a clutch of slacker-themed movies and the TV series Beauty and the Geek. Two new TV shows, Chuck and The Big Bang Theory, also feature geek-boy main characters paired (platonically, for the time being) with hot women. More than ever before, a man with an mind for useless trivia and a socially inept posse can charm nubile women and audiences alike.
A essay criticizing the role of geek women in media and in real world. Focusing on the reasons why geek men are getting fame and female geeks aren’t that popular.
Source: Sarah Seltzer