Published by Zabimaru on 27 Sep 2008 at 09:45 pm
Examples of Favorite Nerdy Girls – Part 1: TV
The web is filled with articles written by people who praise women in the entertainment industry based solely on their beauty. They profess their love for various women for no other reason than that they look good.
Now, we here at Girls with Big Books appreciate beauty too, but we want more. Beauty isn’t really important, and besides, the entertainment industry is filled with nothing but beautiful people, so it’s such a boring thing to concentrate on.
We want openly intelligent and preferably nerdy girls, because that is what we find attractive. That’s why we are beginning this series of posts about our favorite nerdy girls, to help promote that and to balance all those articles about people’s girls who are hot in a more traditional sense.
Today we begin with a couple of examples of what or opinion is about some women we see on TV.
Firefly/Serenity - Kaylee Frye vs. Inara Serra
The TV-show Firefly has its share of beautiful women.
Inara - Beautiful, refined, gracious, boring.
The prime example of a beauty in the show would be Inara Serra. She works as a “companion”, a sort of very glorified prostitute, and she is a very stereotypical beauty. She is gorgeous, she wears immaculate make-up and fancy hairstyles, expensive dresses and tasteful jewelry.
And she seems really boring.
No character on the show is really badly written, but Inara is certainly one of the more two-dimensional ones. Aside from a few moments of serious character development, her entire role in the show seems to consist of going around being eye-candy for the viewers.
Sure, she is very nice to look at. But in the real world she is exactly the kind of girl that I avoid. She is the kind of person who seems to spend all her free time working on her appearances, and it seems like she has few other interests. It is usually very unlikely that a person like that has anything to talk about besides hair, make-up and proper manners; things that would bore most people out of their skulls.
Kaylee - Brilliant mechanic with oil on her nose
Then there is Kaywinnit Lee Frye, or Kaylee, as she is known as.
Kaylee is the ship’s mechanic. She is usually seen wearing workers’ overalls and it is not at all unusual for her to have her hair in disarray and oil on her face. She is a cutie, but she’s not at all the beauty that Inara is.
And she is definitely a lot more attractive to me than Inara.
Kaylee can be a girly girl too at times, pining for pretty dresses and fancy parties, but the important thing is that doesn’t define her. It isn’t all that is to her.
She is absolutely brilliant as a mechanic, and more importantly she loves what she’s doing. She loves her ship and the work maintaining it. She has real, intense interests of her own, other interests than just looking pretty, and that’s something I feel is vitally important for someone to be attractive in the long run.
In the real world I’d rather go for the spirited girl in dirty work clothes than the immaculate beauty in a pretty dress any time. Experience has taught me that it’s the right choice when finding someone that it is actually interesting to spend time with.
Kari Byron from Mythbusters
Kari - Button-cute and geeky
It is true that Mythbuster Kari is even cuter than the proverbial button; she is a very attractive woman regardless of her personality. But I wouldn’t find her even half as attractive as I do if she didn’t seem like such a geek.
Kari doesn’t have quite the same knowledge about scientific matters that someone like here colleague Grant has, but that doesn’t matter all that much. Girls with Big Books isn’t all about the actual books; you don’t have to have read all the big books to be attractive to us. It is her intelligence and her attitude that matters.
And she has a lovely attitude. Kari can get positively giddy about the prospect of doing experiments, blowing stuff up, seeing scientifically verified results, and so on. I think that is a very endearing quality in a person.
Even better is that she is also an artist. We love those with an artist’s soul almost as much as much as we love those who enjoy a bit of science in their lives. That Kari enjoys both makes her doubly attractive to us.
She graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in film and sculpture, and she does some truly interesting things. You can see some of her very interesting (and slightly disturbing) art at www.karibyron.com.
And even putting her affinity for geeky matters and her artistic talent aside, there are a lot of attractive things about her. There is something so great about seeing someone like her driving large forklift trucks, firing a minigun and other weaponry, handling heavy machinery and power tools and so on.
I admit, that attraction stems a lot from how it’s such a break from common stereotypes, but as mentioned above, things like that also makes her seem like a much, much more interesting person to spend time with than the Inara-type of person.
We want more women like that. We know that they exist in great numbers in real life, but unfortunately we see them very rarely in entertainment, and even more unfortunate is that this seems to make some of the real ones go into hiding. Some of them don’t feel attractive, since the stereotypical attractive people on TV don’t have interests like theirs.
But we don’t think that only people with a beautiful exterior have beauty. That’s why this site exists, trying to bring that message out. There are a lot of us who want more women of the intelligent, artistic, nerdy and geeky kinds. And there are a lot of us who couldn’t really care less about how these women look, as long as they have interesting minds.
Tags: firefly, mythbusters, TV
makyo on 02 Oct 2008 at 6:44 pm #
i’m obsessed with all things firefly/serenity, and i agree that the inara character seems so… forced. like they had to have one all-out pretty/sexy girl so they just shoehorn her into the episodes. as cute as kaylee is, i can’t believe you left out zoe! she carries a big gun and could totally kick your ass. now *that’s* sexy!
as for mythbusters, i’m not a big fan of kari but i did really like the other girl who used to be on quite a bit whose name completely escapes me right now. she was much grungier than kari, and as a result she came off as much more knowledgeable and capable, making her more attractive in my opinion.
Zabimaru on 02 Oct 2008 at 6:59 pm #
Thank you for your comment makyo.
I agree that Zoe is sexy, and I thought about mentioning her since her expertise in military matters does make her interesting. But since I was looking for examples of interesting girls of the brainier type, Kaylee was a much better match. And I’m trying to improve my brevity in my writings, so I opted not to put in Zoe, because I felt I had nothing brief to say about her :) And military girls are after all pretty common in TV and movies, but the genius mechanic girls are a rarer breed.
Ah, you’re thinking of Scottie Chapman, also known as “Mistress of metals”. I guess I really should have mentioned her. She is an excellent welder and metal worker and I do really love girls like that (and I know plenty of them in real life, to my great pleasure).
Scottie did sometimes annoy me though, by exhibiting a less than scientific viewpoint on certain things. I still loved her on the show, but Kari is my favorite for her sheer enthusiasm for the experiments they do. She isn’t as scientific as one might want either, but enthusiasm does go a long way :)
makyo on 03 Oct 2008 at 9:06 pm #
ok, point taken about zoe vs. kaylee. i do love that kaylee is smart and capable, not just “pretty girl with big gun”. i guess what i like about zoe - the fact that she’s the equal or better of every big strong man on the show- isn’t as much about her being smart as it is about her being strong. cool? yes, definitely. nerdy? not so much. (potentially unrelated side note: i use the still of kaylee holding the rainbow parasol as an avatar on a regular basis. but i’ve never used an image of zoe. food for thought, maybe.)
as for mythbusters, what you said about scottie (thanks for the name!) is exactly how i feel about kari - less than scientific. with kari i feel like she relies too much on her cuteness rather than actually contributing. also, “mistress of metals” is an awesome title to have.
i guess we should just be glad there are shows out there featuring so many smart women that we are able to disagree on which one is the best! i do think shows like this are a huge step forward in terms of the way women are portrayed in the media.
MaryRose on 04 Oct 2008 at 9:22 am #
I have to say, I’m entirely disappointed to hear anyone who seems to know something about Firefly fail to see the strong character that is Inara Serra. The woman teaches Mal how to fence (Shindig), kills Reavers with a compound bow (Serenity the movie), helps deliver a baby (Heart of Gold), plants a flashbomb disguised as incense and shows an impressive grasp of martial arts against a government trained assassin (Serenity the movie), and repeatedly throughout the series encourages personality in her clients, offers personal advice to practically every crew member (particularly, Mal Kaylee and Shepherd Book), and demonstrates a clear grasp of a variety of cultures and attitudes. Not to mention which, she is Kaylee’s best friend throughout the show. Furthermore, she shows a highly spirited will with Mal. She has been educated in a large variety of practical and pleasurable pursuits, including music, art, dance, psychology, combat, first aid and of course, sexual pursuits.
I am sorry that you failed to grasp the depth of character which Joss Whedon imbued into Inara Serra. Perhaps you would be best to remember that sometimes intelligent, interesting people like to keep themselves well-groomed and beautiful.
This is not to say that I don’t think of Kaylee as a highly intelligent, spunky, and interesting character. Let’s not forget that she’s gorgeous, also. Her profession lends itself to a messier, more grungy look, as does Zoe’s, who also is well-groomed. No, they don’t wear extravagant costumes, but perhaps that has more to do with the fact that they don’t cater to the very wealthy, as does Inara. Kaylee repeatedly expresses envy over Inara’s extensive, elegant wardrobe. Zoe wears more feminine clothing few times through the series, once in the beginning of Our Mrs. Reynolds, once in Serenity the movie, once in Heart of Gold, and once in The Message.
I am simply pointing out that if you choose to find fault in Inara, let it be in her distribution of her body, rather than in her character depth, as she is clearly a very complex character, in fact.
Zabimaru on 04 Oct 2008 at 11:43 am #
makyo: I must admit that most of my less than perfect feelings about Scottie stem from a single episode. In the episode where they test whether plants are affected by talking to them or not, Scottie says before the experiment that she really thinks that she communicates with her plants by thinking and talking to them, and she thinks that this helps them.
Kari says pretty opposite things and she really doesn’t believe that it will work. Of course, having any preconceived belief of the outcome of an experiment before you have any evidence is unscientific, but extraordinary claims do need extraordinary evidence, and with that in mind I think Kari’s position is the more sensible one. Believing that you can think positive thoughts to your plants to get them to grow better, without any evidence for such a process, is just something that I have a hard time respecting.
That being said though, I do really like Scottie too, and maybe I would have liked her better than Kari if she would have stayed on the show so we could have gotten to know her better. As it is now I’ve seen too little of her and have a hard time not judging her from that one incident.
Zabimaru on 04 Oct 2008 at 12:10 pm #
MaryRose, I am sorry to disappoint you. I do admit that I was a bit harsh on Inara in the main text. She does have more depth to the character than I implied, but I never said that she isn’t strong, just that she seems like a pretty boring person. She is strong, but Zoe is stronger (both mentally and physically, I suspect) and I didn’t even see fit to mention her at first.
I do strongly agree that we need to remember that beautiful people can be interesting and intelligent too. It’s like the discussion above, about Kari and Scottie. Kari looks incredible, Scotty is the grungier type when it comes to looks, but I still think that Kari has the more interesting mind. We shouldn’t judge her because she’s cute, and I shouldn’t judge Inara because she is beautiful.
Maybe I have been doing that. But I don’t know. To me it just seems like everything she does on screen is motivated by her sense of doing things that are well mannered. For instance, fencing and archery are typical things to learn when you are to socialize with the rich and fancy, so it would have been more interesting if she pulled out a club and clobbered someone ;) Point taken about martial arts though; that’s not typically a part of high society socializing.
And about her well groomed exterior, I do mention that Kaylee wants similar things at times. But when it comes to Kaylee, that is a much smaller part of her. Like in “Shindig” where she really wants to have a pretty dress and go to a fancy party. When she gets there though, she discovers that she doesn’t have Inara’s knowledge of how to look and behave to be accepted by typical high society girls, but she doesn’t let that bother her for long. She is soon dazzling a large group of men by talking with them about technical details about engine configurations, instead of typical party small talk.
So I don’t blame a character for wanting to look pretty, I know that doesn’t have to mean that they don’t have something else too. But I have a harder time with Inara, since she obviously spends very much time on her hair and make up even when she is on the ship, out in deep space for weeks, where she sees no one but her closest friends. To me that just seems like a girl who cares more about her outward appearance than most other things, and those girls are usually very boring.
But sure, I have surely judged her too harshly. Part of the harsh judgment in the post was an act though ;) I just needed a good contrast between them to illustrate the point that just because someone is more beautiful it doesn’t have to mean that they are more attractive. Maybe that led me to taking some cheap shots and I apologize. I stand by my opinion that Inara is one of the more boring characters in the way she acts through most of the series though ;)
Jacida on 04 Oct 2008 at 8:34 pm #
I found this site through a tiny ad on an online game, and I find it fascinating! And I have to pipe in.
I agree with MaryRose 100%. Inara is able to converse intelligently about a vast number of subjects other than hair and makeup-which she NEVER mentioned, and probably in several languages (other than English and Chinese). She has a biting sense of humor, and she is a great mystery from the very beginning, when Mal asks her why she’s running, and she blows him off. (Much like when Shepherd Book’s character refuses to answer Mal’s questions about his origin. There were WAY too many questions left unanswered when this show was canceled. Booo.)
That, and as a fencing woman myself, I think it is ridiculously awesome that she had to teach Mal to fence.
Being bisexual myself, I also have to mention the more-than-client relationship with a powerful woman that she maintained, evidently for a long time.
She’s got depth. Being pretty doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a personality.