Girls with Big Books

Princess Leia Organa

We all know about the wonderful princess Leia from Star Wars. I don’t think there is any need to say too much about her; I would suspect that anyone who visits this site knows fully well why she belongs here. I’ll just give you short recap though, if it by any chance is needed.

Leia is a wonderful example of someone who might start out like a the damsel in distress type of character, but is far from helpless. She is portrayed all throughout the movies as an incredibly courageous, headstrong, intelligent and capable woman.

She is apparently an accomplished politician. She can lead forces into battle and organize rebel soldiers. She’s an excellent marksman and she also seems to possess great strength, being able to strangle the massive Jabba the Hutt with a chain. She has a sharp mind and she can deliver wonderfully sharp little insults as well.

Side note: I realize that a lot of what I’ve said, as well as a lot of what I’m going to say, applies just as much to Queen Amidala from the new movies. But I won’t be mentioning her anymore in this post, because I generally pretend that the new movies don’t exist. I like to pretend that they are just some huge prank played on all the people who have waited for parts 1-3 since the eighties, and that any day now we will get to see the new movies. So Amidala doesn’t exist, even if she does happen to be in the video below.

We love women like her. We do not love the following video. The following video is concentrated pain for almost any Star Wars fan. And the part with Leia is by far the worst to me (and I have to admit that I kind of liked Vader and the Stormtroopers dancing Thriller. Seriously, Vader doing pelvic thrusts, how could that possibly be wrong?).

The part with Leia and the other girls is just… I have no words. I just feel that they could not possibly have chosen a worse song for them to dance for. Seriously, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”?

Now I know that this is considered to be some kind of feminist anthem because. And I guess that it can be, since it depicts girls who do what they want instead of what society expects of them. And that’s good, and I guess that fits with Leia too.

But other than that it just doesn’t fit. “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” seems to be about frivolous girls who care very little about anything but moments of fleeting fun. Leia on the other hand has an enormous sense of duty and honor, and she seems to spend as much of her life as possible doing the things she feels are truly important.

Leia was royalty on Alderaan. In all likelihood she could have just stayed there and had as much fun as she wanted to, but she didn’t. Instead she chose to be very actively involved with the rebellion in an almost suicidal effort to save the galaxy from evil. Now they have her character gleefully dancing around looking ditzy, while mouthing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”.

It is painful. There should have been more pelvic thrusting Darth Vader instead. Seriously.

I got the idea of starting a site in tribute to girls with big books when I was writing about something else entirely. I don’t remember what I was writing about, but in my writing I mentioned that intelligence and personality is very much more important to me than looks. I made a quip about how I’m certain that if I search on Google, the search “girls with big books” would yield results that I find sexier than the search “girls with big boobs” would.

When I realized that this was probably very much true, I naturally tried my theory out (secretly hoping for some hot nerdy action, no doubt). Unfortunately, it turned out that I was wrong. Searching for “girls with big books” gave very few results and only a few of them were relevant. So, because of my big love for smart and nerdy girls, I thought that something needed to be done about that. When I checked and found out that this domain name was available, I snatched it with very little idea about what to do with it.

But there was actually at least one relevant thing about girls with big books before this site. It is a shirt design at spreadshirt.com and it can be found here.

I must admit that I’m about conflicted about the design. It says “I LIKE GIRLS WITH BIG BOOKS / AND GOOD LOOKS”.

Big Books and Good Looks

The designer’s comment on the design is “Intelligent girls are sexier” and of course I couldn’t agree more about that. But was it really necessary to add the “and good looks”-part?

I still think it’s a pretty good shirt and I don’t really mind that many care a lot about looks. But I think it would have been a much better shirt if it didn’t specify that the girls have to look good. I know that most people who really like intelligent/nerdy girls don’t really care that much about looks.

I personally love looking at beautiful women, but when it comes to finding someone to spend my time with I’d choose brains over beauty any time. Sure, it can be nice if there are both, but it’s not like it’s a requirement, and I think that a lot of people agree with me there.

I hope that this site, perhaps in contrast to that shirt, will help some girls realize that they can be judged fairly by their minds, regardless of how they look. I think that it’s sad that so many girls seem to think that they can’t be liked if they don’t have typical good looks. I would have liked that shirt better if it didn’t add to the impression

Some time ago I wrote about Kate McAlpine’s Large Hadron Rap, and mentioned how unusual I think it is to see any intellectual music.

A comment on that post mentioned Alanis Morissette, giving her as an example of an intelligent singer. Now, I’m not saying that’s necessarily wrong; she might be very intelligent. I honestly don’t know much about her, so I have no idea. But I don’t think that her music seems all that intellectual.

The song that, of course, comes to mind is the popular Ironic. It’s an entire song dedicated to misusing the word “ironic” by stating that a bunch of situations are ironic when they are merely unfortunate or coincidental.
A lot of comedians have already ripped that song to shreds, so I won’t reiterate their points too much. Here’s one of them that you can listen to instead:

And I usually find popular songs just as stupid as that Alanis Morissette song. Sometimes it goes beyond stupid though, like with Katie Melua’s Nine Million Bicycles.

In it she sings “We are twelve billion light years from the edge / That’s a guess / No one can ever say it’s true / But I know that I will always be with you” and that’s just a very bad thing to sing.
Not because twelve billion isn’t a very accurate figure; I will accept that since twelve is the monosyllabic number closest to 13.7. But what really does bother me is that she says that it’s a guess.

I love science and I it bothers me that many seem to have a very bad grasp of what science really is. Creationists, homeopathic “doctors” and other quack “scientists” thrive on making people believe that science is just some vague guesswork presented as truth. I don’t think we need singers who add to that belief by claiming that astronomers “guess” that we are a certain distance from the edge of the universe.

But Melua really came through and vindicated herself. When physicist Simon Singh wrote a piece in The Guardian criticizing the song, and giving an idea for alternative, more correct lyrics, she reacted wonderfully.

I would guess that very many entertainers would just scoff at his criticism, thinking that he is a boring old man talking about things that no one cares about. But not Katie Melua; she apologized and admitted her error and actually recorded a version with the “corrected” lyrics. Now, that version will never be a commercial success, but I love it. And watch this next video if you want to hear it too.

Now that’s the kind of musician that we need more of. That she did this says a lot about her.

There are a lot of great female authors out there, but for some reason they are often hard to remember. One of the few how stand out immediately in my mind (among contemporary writers) is Danielle Steel, and she’s not exactly the kind of writer I feel the urge to write about on this site.

I don’t know why it is that it can be so much easier to remember great male authors when trying to think of some writer I admire. Maybe it is my own fault, or the fault of a culture that promotes male writers better. I don’t know, really.

However, one female author who is easy to remember is J.K. Rowling, who wrote the extremely successful Harry Potter books. I can’t say that I’m a Harry Potter-fanboy at all but I do feel that Rowling deserves a mention here, for several reasons.

"J. K." Rowling

First of all, she seems like a real nerd, and we like that. Seriously, anyone who has ideas that are as geeky as the universe that Harry Potter inhabits in their heads, score big points with those of us who like nerds.

But the effect she has on other people is even more important.

Obviously, her success has encouraged a lot of young women to pursue their author dreams, and that’s a great thing. Especially if she manages to inspire and encourage the nerdy type of girls, because honestly, can there be anything hotter than a woman who writes nerdy fantasy or science fiction books? I have a hard time imagining anything sexier.

But I actually think that the most important thing about her is her name. Continue Reading »

I’ve been trying to update this site more frequently, but things keep getting in the way. Most recently, my computer broke. Earlier today it just totally quit on me, in that whiny bitch kind of way that computers are prone to.

It seems like my IDE-channels are sending out random garbage to my drives, because both my HDDs and DVD-drive are making funky (and probably very damaging) scratchy noises if I try to turn it on.

So now I’ve pulled out one of the old discarded machines laying around (hey, I’m a nerd, of course I have spare computers) and I’m trying to get it to work. It has a half-borked Linux-installation on it that I just wish I had the energy to fix right now.

Oh well, I’ll probably start updating this site some more when I’ve had the time and energy to get either of the computers fixed.

But, on a happier (for some definition of the word happy) note, when I fired up some browsers on this computer and checked out the site I saw that the header looks awful. I don’t know if it looks like that because of the brokenness of this computer, or if I borked it earlier. I really have paid minimal attention to site design. But if the header looks wrong to you, quite besides being boring and uninspired, drop a note and tell me, and I’ll try to get around to fixing that too.

I have repeatedly stated that outward appearances aren’t important to me, and I’ve said that even though the title of this site is “Girls with Big Books” actual big books aren’t important. I’ve been telling you that what I care about is what’s in a person’s mind, how they think and act, and that I prefer the nerdy, intellectual type, regardless of how they look or how big books they read.

But sometimes I have to question if I’m really like that. I recently saw the photo of Paris Hilton below and I must admit, when I saw her sitting there reading Sun Tzu’s book I suddenly found her pretty attractive. It didn’t last long, but seriously, that’s not something anyone should have to go through!

Paris Hilton

But what is the reason for my momentary infatuation with the little heiress? I’ll admit that I don’t know as much about her as most other people seem to do, but what I do know has always made me feel that she is not someone I like to spend any time with. Continue Reading »

I know that I’ve been writing a lot about xkcd lately, but I felt the need for one more post about it.

One of my favorite girls from the comic that I haven’t mentioned yet is Joanna, the girl with the EMP-cannon in the strip “Pix Plz”. Sometimes I feel that we need girls like her in real life, to handle the obnoxious Internet-goers, and make the Internet more welcoming to female nerds.

So, in tribute to her and to xkcd I tried to draw some fan art depicting Joanna. I’m really not good at drawing, but I thought that if I start posting a few things I draw, it might make me practice and get better.

Joanna

And why is she wearing goggles, you might ask? Well, of course it is because she’s a blogger! She is making a fashion statement and foregoes the classical red cape though.

Original: Continue Reading »

I sometimes write for a site called thisisby.us, which is a writing site which I consider very nice. When I first started reading the posts there, I found many female writers like the ones that I write about here; intelligent and interesting women, writing things that I love to read.

Some of them are still there, but the site have been seeing less activity lately, so therefore I thought that I would post this here to try to enlist some more smart and fun girls.

If you like to write, you can write at thisisby.us. The site allows original writings of any kind, and you get paid for writing. You don’t get paid much (we often talk about the sweet, sweet TIBU-pennies) and possibly not at all, but I love to come there for the atmosphere, even though the site will never make you rich.

There are a lot of nice regulars there who write interesting posts and leave lots of fun comments. I think that if you are someone who likes to write, you should check it out. You can register here.

If you want to read what I’ve written for the site, you can see my stuff here. There is some humor, politics, obscene haiku-poetry, posts about religion and civil rights, and a couple of short stories.

I hope to see you on TIBU! The site really is a very nice place and I would love to see some of you there. Every writing site can use some more girls with big books, and more people who like them.

I have personally considered myself very much a feminist since around second grade. I recognize the need for a continued struggle for women’s rights. Despite that, this site is not at all meant to be a feminist site. This is merely a tribute to the kind of girls that I find the most attractive, without any political agenda to it.

However, it has come to my attention that some people would still view this as a feminist site. And that got me thinking. Continue Reading »

I feel the need to write a short little post about one of my favorite historical nerds, the intriguing Lady Lovelace, in case this site has any visitors who do not know about her.

Ada Lovelace