“Mr. P says that in ten years of teaching Science Fiction, this is the first time he’s had a class with more girls than boys.” Kiki told me as I drove her home from school. I had been startled to learn that a high school had a Science Fiction Literature class at all, but it does, and Kiki signed up for it. Apparently so did many other girls. Kiki has geeky girl friends who will agonize with her over Avatar The Last Airbender or the latest video game story. I had male friends who would talk these things, but no girls. None of the girls I knew really got it. Or at least they didn’t seem to.
In high school I was in full geek girl stealth mode. I borrowed Esprit sweatshirts from my friends, had slumber parties, went to dances. I enjoyed all of this things, but there was a whole list of things that I also enjoyed only at home. I watched Star Trek and Doctor Who. I played Dungeons and Dragons with my siblings. I read fantasy books. I wonder now how many other geek girls there were out there, also stealthed.
My daughter’s geek girl experience has been different. She and her friends have video game parties. She wears a Halo hat to school. She carried a bag embroidered with dice and the words “Bag of Holding” and got compliments for it instead of ridicule. She has never been teased for any of these things. She never felt like she had to hide these things in order to successfully navigate the social scene at school. It is possible that she is braver than I was, more geeky. However I also think there has been a significant social shift which makes it okay for girls to like these things. This shift is evidenced by the Sci Fi Lit class which now has more girls than boys when ten years ago it was exclusively male.
I’m glad for my daughters that this is so.
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And then we grew up, and conquered the world.
Which is pretty melodramatic.
Still, when you look at facts like 9 of the top 10 highest-grossing-films of all time are fantasy or sf, or Target carrying Pandemic and Settlers of Catan, or World of Warcraft having a significant fraction of the American population in its playerbase -- it's just not the same world as 25 years ago.
Which is AWESOME. I love the way my culture is taking over the mainstream. <3
Exactly. I remember my surprise when the late '90s came with the Internet boom and suddenly geeks were considered cool. I went through a bit of culture shock in the process. For the first decade of my life my interest in computers and programming was considered a bit strange, if not totally un-cool, and suddenly my interests were considered cool.
Personally, I think the change was partly because it's harder to think that those who are making millions of dollars from their "quirky" skills are stupid, and partly because a large number of stealth geeks connected via the Internet and discovered that they weren't as alone and weird as they thought.