(No, not the TV show.)
So I know I owe y’all a big continuation of the Nice Guys exploration and I promise I’ll be getting to it, but I’m so ridiculously swamped right now, you have no idea. Meanwhile, here’s two interesting posts by Sarah Rees Brennan and Justine Larbalestier about the Blank Page Heroine — or the personality-less girl that often serves as either a male fantasy or a stand-in for female readers to insert themselves into the story and run off with the hot hero. One of the big tips in writing romance novels is to have a hero your reader wants to fall in love with an a heroine your reader wants to be. Relatable != Personality-free.
Go read those posts. In the comments section of Justine’s post, PixelFish brings up the topic of geeky characters, which is one type of personality that doesn’t get a lot of play in traditional romances:
I also wanna mention Meg Cabot who writes some geeky heroines in her adult romances. (My favourite is a short redhead who reads gossip columns, watches the weather channel and has a Princess Xen action figure.) I compare that to another writer who I will refrain from naming who claimed to write about geeks but only wrote Hollywood geeks–ie. beautiful people who just needed to take their glasses off to find love. Whereas Meg Cabot’s geeks are geeks to the bone. Her character wasn’t going to stop watching the Weather Channel or ditch the Xena figure just to get a guy.
I started thinking about geeky characters, and their portrayal in fiction. I have recently finished watching all the available episodes of GREEK, and among my myriad problems with the show (inconsistent characterizations, sexism, massively bad stereotyping) is the way they codify geekiness. It’s not “quite” as bad as watching an episode of Saved By the Bell, but it’s close.
For instance, the two main characters, Casey and Rusty Cartwright, are a brother and sister who fall firmly among the “popular cheerleader” “geek loser” lines. Casey, the older sister, is a gorgeous blonde who is the leader of her “best sorority on campus,” has an active social and sex life, and is time and again shown to be very shallow (picking taps pledges based on their hotness factor). It is established that her younger brother Rusty is a “loser” whom she doesn’t even acknowledge to her closest friends, predicated mainly on the fact that he wears striped polo shirts, turned down MIT to come to this state school and study “Honors engineering” and is a “genius” who doesn’t do tequila shots. Rusty wishes to join a fraternity, and is quickly welcomes into the embrace of the “loser” frat on campus, Gamma Tau. (And by “loser” they seem to mean “Animal House” not “Revenge of the Nerds” as this frat clearly throws amazing parties that seem to be populated every weekend by hundreds of students. Later in the series it is established that there is a frat for “nerds” called something that sounds like “sci fi” but is made of Greek letters, where the members all wear glasses and watch Star Trek.)
The members of Casey’s sorority, though they are the “hottest” girls on campus, are constantly worried about being associated more often with this “loser” party frat than with the blazer-wearing trust-fund frat Sigma Chi, who are supposedly the “hottest” guys on campus — DESPITE the fact that the leader of the “loser” frat is easily the most attractive and interesting person on the show, is tapped for the super special senior secret society that the leader of the “best” fraternity is also tapped for, has a long string of hotties to date and regularly dates the members of Casey’s so called “best” sorority (later, this becomes an issue, as apparently their intimate connection to the “loser” frat brings down their reputation on campus). Meanwhile, the members of this “hottest fraternity” are mostly either openly gay or closeted (thereby negating the purpose of being a source of dates for their “best sorority partners) or butt ugly (as evinced by the short, pale, pugilistic crew cut red head currenlty rallying the other frat members against the Jason Dohring lookalike frat leader)…
To make a long story short, I don’t really grok the understood and unstated value system which informs every plotline on the show, but that might be because I’m the kind of person who knows what grok means. To the characters of Greek, I would be a geek/loser relegated to (undeniably popular and sociable) fraternities, if I managed to make it into one at all.
I have a hard time understanding that. I didn’t go to a big frat school. I don’t even know if any of the frats were residential, but I do know that I had sorority girls as roommates (and my husband had fraternity boys) as upperclassmen. I always imagined there was a frat for every flavor at the schools where frats are a thing. And I have a really tough time understanding why the frat with the reputation for throwing the best parties on campus could be simultaneously regarded as “losers” — especially since time and again, the characters say they joined the greek system “for the parties.”
It’s a similar problem to the one I find watching The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother, where often, in adjacent episodes, the characters make the EXACT SAME geeky reference (often to Star Wars). In the former show, the characters are drawn as out of touch losers with no friends outside their circle and zero romantic opportunities. In the latter show, the characters are drawn as attractive, sociable members of society with hot wives, hot girlfriends, and an endless parade of hot one night stands. (Also in the latter, the hot girl dates make geeky references too.) Since when does liking science fiction and academia turn you into an unsocialized loser?
Honestly, HIMYM feels way more realistic to me. Geeks come in all shapes and sizes, and some of us have happy, sociable, romantically fulfilled lives with our cool, cute geek husbands, thank you very much. We don’t live in Revenge of the Nerds or Saved by the Bell, people. Look around. The geeks have inherited the Earth.
I didn’t set out to write “geek” characters. The characters of Secret Society Girl are, granted, far more “geeky” — by Greek standards! — just by dint of studying hard enough to make it into an Ivy League school. I had to laugh at Pixelfish’s suggestion of “taking off the glasses to find love,” since the hottest and most popular guy in my books by far is George Prescott, who wears glasses and gets the girl. He also rocks a mean Star Wars reference on many occasions.
Poe, however, is a character whose geekiness is overlaid by general anti-social behavior. It’s not just that he wears old, ill-fitting clothes as a poor undergrad and owns a giant pet snake named Voldemort and was probably a D&D Dungeonmaster growing up. It’s that he doesn’t seem to want to be friends with most people and most people return the favor.
None of the girls in SSG are coded as geeks, either, and really, that’s part of the point. When I got to college, I realized that many of the interests that might have gotten you in trouble in the rigid high school hierarchy no longer existed. There was a larger pool of students from which you could draw your own social group, and even the most party animal of kids (again, I suppose “party animal” is coded as “loser” on Greek) were bookish nerds about something, otherwise, they wouldn’t have been at Yale.
Jenny, probably the shyest of the taps, is a computer engineer, but she has a large group of friends in both her computer and religious circles and can hold her own in most social situations.Her shyness is a cover, because she also has a smart mouth, and I always imagine her being much more outspoken online and probably more used to that in her day to day life — until the Diggers got their hands on her.
And part of it also is that I was writing about young adults at a highly competitive college. They were 21 years old and, for the most part had come to terms with their personality types and the friendships those engendered. That was the whole point of the society — to break them out of that mold and make them friends with people that weren’t part of their social group. (Greek has something similar with the leaders of rival frats joining the same secret society.) But I could also play with the hierarchy label, especially in the first book, where Amy’s insecurities about George and Clarissa are not even recognized by the other two characters. Amy’s whole reason for hating Clarissa is because she knew that Clarissa talked bad about her freshman year. Back when they were teenagers. Back when Clarissa and Amy were both more caught up in the idea of high school-style hierarchy. Clarissa, at 21, doesn’t even remember it. It’s no longer part of her personality or worldview.
And then I wrote a YA novel, and I got to bring the whole high school hierarchy back into play.
Astrid, in Rampant, comes from a high school society far more focused on sports (Phil is popular because she plays volleyball, Brandt is popular because he swims) but her borderline status is due to her own shyness, her mother’s reputation around town and family as a crazy person, and the fact that a lot of 16 year old boys are put off by 16 year old girls who are smarter than them, especially in the sciences. Nevertheless, she is, at the start of the novel, dating someone, and she gets another boyfriend in Rome.
I didn’t realize this as writing it, but I’ve had teen girls come up to me and say that Astrid must be very beautiful and popular, to have two boyfriends. I don’t really think of it that way, given the nature of her relationship with Brandt. He was her first boyfriend, and he’s the kind of guy who dates a lot of girls. Personally, I think he’s taking advantage of Astrid’s place in the social pecking order, especially in her first year at school where she doesn’t have Phil around as an anchor. But though Astrid’s love of science might code her as a geek, her mother’s reputation pushes her more into the “freak” realm. Either way, her social standing at school is far from secure. And then I take her out of that environment and put her in the Cloisters, where she suddenly finds herself to be at the top of the totem pole, part of an inner clique among unicorn hunters — a social structure that would be utterly alien to the kids on Greek. And she feels just as uncomfortable there.
I wonder if YA fiction is written about more “geeks” — more people who feel out of place in their environment. Because I think almost every kid does, no matter where they truly stand in society. I can think of very few books (outside the Gossip Girl and knock off group) written about the most popular girl and usually they are “the popular girl brought low” variety — like SKINNED by Robin Wasserman, which is a futuristic sci-fi take on destroying the life of the popular girl. And even Gossip Girl has that outsider perspective, the perspective of the gossip girl narrator.
My own high school experience was fine. Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty of relationship drama, and a lot of the time I felt like I was on the outs with certain groups, but I also had plenty of friends. I went to a small high school (~60 people per grade) and lines weren’t drawn that way. The captain of the soccer team (we didn’t have football) was also the lead in the school play. The student body president was also the artsy, guitar-playing party kid (I dated him — in fact, he was my only high school boyfriend, an experience that proved I was so not ready for the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing at 16). We didn’t have much of a geek/cool kid divide. People hung out in different groups, but there was also tons of crossover and no one really looked down on any other group. I remember talking to one of my good friends, who was definitely part of the jock crowd and partied more than most of my friends, but was also in highest AP calculus and ended up at Princeton, and he was marveling about how the stereotype at most schools is that the “mean, popular” kids were all the jocks, but the theater kids in my school were way more stuck up. I was a theater kid, and had been, I believe, regaling him with tales of the latest theater crowd drama.
What do you think? Do you like books about geeks? Do you like geeky romantic interests? Do you think that YA books get the lion’s share of geeky characters? What book reminds you most of your own high school experience?
Oh, and for those of you who went to large, frat-focused school. Is Greek right about their take on that society? Why would people join frats “for the parties” then look down on the frat that throws the best ones?
November 19th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
I went to a big state school with a HUGE greek system, and was in a sorority for a semester (I deactivated when I discovered I had more fun at work than I did in my “house” with my “sisters”). There was a TON of pressure to choose the frats that were known for being cool. I remember filling out a form listing what frats we wanted to do an exchange with, and I chose the frat my roommate’s boyfriend was in (thinking that he’s a great guy so he must be in a decent frat) and one of the girls telling me that his frat was not considered cool so we shouldn’t associate with them.
November 19th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
The Greek system at my school was a pretty big part of campus life. I wasn’t in a fraternity, but I think I had acquaintances and classmates from just about every fraternity and sorority, and I honestly couldn’t tell you if any one group attracted a certain type.
(And for the record, I graduated from Murray State University — BS in Journalism and Theatre Arts.)
November 20th, 2009 at 12:01 am
Holy crap, PR, you were our rivals! Well, not really, but I have a friend that graduated from the Journalism program there about three years back.
I graduated from a school with a fairly active Greek system–I was even involved in a “fringe” fraternity that paired up with the Greeks for some philanthropy. And this was actually the question I was asked when I gave campus tours to prospective students. They wanted to know about the Greek system. I used to be able to quote all sorts of numbers and facts on Greek life. I think a lot of people DID join for the parties, and there was some sneering about certain chapters on our campus, but the people who stuck around did it because they liked the camaraderie as well as the parties. (As an RA who had to do rounds with the Greek housing RAs once a month, I can even attest that quite a few of the houses on campus looked disgustingly like the Kappa Tau’s house, though there were a few Omega Chi houses mixed in the bunch. Of course, I never divulged that particular information on my tours…)
I’ve always kind of thought the best geeks are in YA, going back to even before the days of the angry Meg Murry who had braces and was convinced she was extremely ugly. I mean, she ends up with Calvin O’Keefe, who’s tall, well-liked, and a great basketball player (and in later books, she ends up beautiful, which negates my point a bit, but oh well. A Wrinkle In Time is classic) but I do think that lately, there’s been a trend toward Rise of the Geek that doesn’t involve a make-over, a push-up bra or taking off ones’ glasses to be beautiful. Which is good. That stuff should stay in the trashy romance section.
And as for the book that reminds me most of my teenage experience? Um…I empathized with Vicky Austin quite a bit (sensing a theme?). Big family, moved a lot, liked a guy named Adam.
November 20th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
When you mentioned Meg Murry, Lell, it suddenly struck me that David Weber did much the same with Honor Harrington. They both went through an ugly duckling phase, and they both came out of it being regarded as beautiful — only in Honor’s case, it lasted until her mid-40s.
November 20th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
PR, I guess whether you’re fighting Haven or the Echthroi, you’re either destined to come out looking like something the treecat dragged in or you’re going to wind up beautiful?
November 20th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Did you or did you not order the Code Geek?
I want the truth!
November 22nd, 2009 at 12:32 am
Erm, PR, you’ve stumped me. Even my Google Fu is no match for you. Code Geek? The only “Code” I’ve ordered recently is the last CodeX Alera novel…
November 22nd, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Well, you know I was a sorority girl at a huge university with a growing Greek system. I loved being in a sorority and I’m still friends with some of the girls I met there. We were a cool sorority, too. We always pledged a full class and were always at our maximum for membership. I find How I Met Your Mother much more believable to my experience than Greek or Revenge of the Nerds.
November 22nd, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Actually I watch the show Greek religiously, (its a guilty pleasure for my boyfriend and I). The reason Kappa Tau are considered losers, even though they throw the best parties, is because they have no ambition, prestige, or money. Basically the guys who join are just looking for a party and not to make connections for their future. Which is why they live in a dilapidated house and most of the brothers aren’t very bright. I went to a school with a huge greek system and while one of the main reasons to join were because of the parties, another big reason was for the connections you could make that would maybe help out later in life. I found that aspect of the show to be very realistic.
November 22nd, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Except, Ashely, that’s demonstrably not true. Rusty is a “genius” in honors engineering who manages to get a professor to sponsor him on a major experiment as an underclassman. Heath (I think that’s his name?), the openly gay Kappa Tau, is such a hard worker that he graduates early. Cappie is tapped into the secret society, reserved for the best students at the school. The Logan lookalike leader of Sigma Chi WANTED to be in kappa Tau, as did the top football recruit that year (andy). Besides that, you get the idea that Rusty, who is certainly the “most likely to succeed” person on the show (aside from his roommate) would never have been tapped for Sigma Chi were it not for catching his sister’s boyfriend cheating on her.
Wouldn’t they want to tap him because he would undoubtedly be so successful?
And over and over the sorority girls point to having *parties* with Sigma Chi as being a better choice because they’re “hotter” — which I don’t see much evidence of, as aside from the Logan lookalike, the hot ones are almost all gay, not because they’re “richer.” And obviously not because they throw better parties. It’s like they only want to hang out with the people who won’t hang out with them? And if the KTs are really such “losers” who are the hundreds of people at all their parties? Independents? There’s a disconnect there I don’t really follow.
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:25 am
I went to a private university that wasn’t allowed to have a Greek System so I cannot relate to Greek in the least. I have tried watching it a few times with no success.
I can comment on the Geek question though, I think all of us is a little geeky and therefore can relate better to the geeky over popular, cool character. I mean, who hasn’t felt awkward and unsure of themselves at times? Who hasn’t found themselves liking something totally nerdy? I just don’t think many people can relate to the popular person who is so cool and comfortable with themselves all the time. And I totally hate the whole, ‘take off your glasses and let down your hair and then you’ll be beautiful and popular’ thing. So UNTRUE! Meg Murry was loved by Calvin BEFORE she became beautiful. And she was young so she was going through her awkward years. We all have those years with frizzy hair, braces, zits, etc. That’s what Meg was going through and then she pulled out of it, like most people.
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:31 am
I agree Lisa. I always got the sense that Meg was in her awkward years, and her later beauty was not so much traffic stopping supermodel beauty as the kind of elegance and self-confidence that comes from having, oh, I don’t know, saved her father, her brother, and the world from the clutches of interdimensional evil *and* getting the heart of the hot guy, to boot.
Because you figure out how to wrangle mousse and deep conditioning, you get a more fashionable pair of glasses, the braces come off, you learn to dress for your body type — I have some seriously unattractive pictures of myself as a teen and I’m pretty cute now.
For instance, it’s not like Poe wants to dress terribly, but he has no money. Once he’s in law school and has a more reasonable budget, you see him investing in new clothes. He’s not exactly a fashion plate, but he can pull off a new sweater or two.
November 24th, 2009 at 10:37 am
And of course, Amy would just love to help him pull off that new sweater.