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February 20, 2005
The girl math geek
In her Slate column on the Larry Summers controversy, Meghan O'Rourke writes something truly amazing:More generally, although matters have improved, we still treat the hard sciences and math as essentially masculine domains. The phenomenon of the girl math geek who frets that she can't get any dates continues to be a stereotype for a reason.
Huh? It's not the girl math geek that can't get a date. it's math geeks of both genders. Indeed, being a nerdy girl is an excellent way to meet guys, precisely because the demographics are so male heavy. Of course, you have to be willing to date nerdy guys, but if you're nerdy yourself, you don't have much standing to complain about that. It's particularly amusing that O'Rourke uses Mean Girls as an example, since any high school girl who looks like Lindsey Lohan--math geek or no--pretty much has to beat guys off with a stick.
Posted by ekr at February 20, 2005 8:21 AM | Filed under:
Comments
I'm glad I'm not the only person who thought that when I read her piece.
Posted by: Bob McGrew at February 20, 2005 3:19 PM