Duke It Out: Date a Geek?

July 31, 2009 9:00 am     Posted in Reality, Relationships  Lauren H - The New School g+ page

comic con geek


By Lauren H

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. We love a strong woman, so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like over-the-knee boots!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

The fan orgy that is Comic-Con has finally ended and as I watch my BF pour over the web coverage hoping to find some hidden tidbit about the next Batman movie, I have to wonder, have geeks replaced jocks as the guys we want to be with?

It seems like in the last few years I’ve read a lot of things encouraging the nerd love. There are dating sites dedicated solely to men of this ilk and enough Google hits for “date a geek” to boggle this writer’s mind. Geek culture is out in the open and everyone’s flying their freak flag (even us at College Candy!). And the nerd-set definitely has a few aces in the hole; by nature they prove themselves to be passionately dedicated to their obsession of choice, they tend to be smart, well-read, and (in my experience) they often have a touch of that hopeless romantic we’ve all pined after in rom-coms.

But, on the downside, the odds of that cuddly little nerd ever turning into the gorgeous hunk of man-candy you drool over at the beach (you know you do) is pretty low. And there’s a reason we aren’t inherently attracted to the scrawny, pale types – biologically we are programmed to respond to physical fitness as a trait of an ideal mate. Also, dating a geek generally entails spending a fair amount of time immersed in whatever his particular brand of nerdom is (did I mention my BF is still looking up Batman?) and if his special obsession doesn’t appeal to you, well… I’ve known guys who broke up with girls for favoring Star Trek over Star Wars.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that most of the things I’ve mentioned above are part of the stereotypical geek, and no one will perfectly match up to it. Most of us have our own little nerdy things going on – I have read a certain Hobbit-oriented book no less than seven times - so it’s probably not fair to judge based solely on the geek-factor. But with everyone from movie studios to women’s mags clamoring after these guys, there’s no question we’re living in the age of the geek.

So what do you think, ladies? Are you down with dating the kid in the Chewbacca t-shirt? Are you totally over the geek craze? Would you put up with his love of comics/sci-fi/online gaming? Or do you prefer your men a little more traditional?

23 Comments on "Duke It Out: Date a Geek?"

  1. Desiree says:
    Fri, 31st Jul 20094:35 am 

    every geek has his day.

  2. Jenny says:
    Fri, 31st Jul 20095:42 am 

    My boyfriend and I are total geek, and it is quite awesome. :) We spend a lot of our time together gaming, which is something I've always wanted in a relationship. And fortunately for me, my boyfriend is a half-Asian hottie, so I get the best of both worlds in my relationship.

  3. Stephanie PTY says:
    Fri, 31st Jul 20096:41 am 

    I have never dated a single guy that wasn't a geek, and I'm happy as a clam. But I'm a definite geek-girl myself: I've been to Comic-Con twice, despite living on the East Coast! I love my geeky guys, and I find myself very turned off by guys who are too traditionally jock-like or make fun of geeky things. Yeah, pretending that YOU never get obsessed over anything isn't a real turn on, guys. Just because it happens to be football doesn't mean you're not a geek about it, so don't make fun of me and my Buffy addiction!

  4. Marisa - Wesleyan Un says:
    Fri, 31st Jul 20097:28 am 

    The guys I tend to be attracted to are geeks in some way. I'm a geek myself, so I guess it's only natural. I agree with Stephanie 100%: I don't find jock-types attractive at all, and the kind of jerky behavior traditionally associated with jocks is a major turn-off. I'll take Seth Cohen over a football player any day!

  5. Sarah says:
    Fri, 31st Jul 200912:07 pm 

    I think it's interesting how all the girls so far have described themselves as geeks. Finally! As much as I love heels, clubbing and girly stuff, I also love my video games and my superheroes. The geek age may be here partly because girls are finally open about their own geeky side and want to date someone like them…

    Plus, I love geeks because I think they do tend to be more respectful, funnier, and the 'I can't believe a girl like you would go for a guy like me' attitude is a huuuuuuge plus in bed ;) .

  6. girl says:
    Fri, 31st Jul 200912:09 pm 

    geeks are the best. they actually have INTERESTING things to talk about post-cuddle session. ;D

  7. Lynn says:
    Fri, 31st Jul 20092:32 pm 

    I dress very girly and party quite a bit, but I'm a computer science major so I spend 90% of my time surrounded by geeks. We do awesome shiz, like drink liquid nitrogen and play Human Mario Kart. (Take a tricycle, race it down a parking structure. Chuck some dodgeballs at the racers for good measure. Repeat).

  8. anonymn says:
    Fri, 31st Jul 20094:44 pm 

    Women aren't biologically programmed to like fit men, and men aren't biologically programmed to be attracted to women with motherly traits of wide birthing hips or whatever bullshit people who barely understand evolutionary psychology write about regarding women and men.

  9. Paige says:
    Fri, 31st Jul 20097:59 pm 

    I concur, geeks are the best type of men to date because they will worship you more, have better conversations, and will be more open with you. Plus, you can usually have a bit more control in the relationship with geeks.

    But to Lynn, you can't drink liquid nitrogen…

  10. Casey says:
    Fri, 31st Jul 20099:45 pm 

    As long as he's a follow of Christ!

    Then I'll have a threesome with him and Newt Gingrich.

  11. Dannia- Loyola Unive says:
    Sat, 1st Aug 20098:36 am 

    Right now as I type this, I look across to my bookshelf…it's filled with Harry Potter, a copy of Watchmen, and more classic literature than I'd like to mention. And those are my "fun" books. So yes…my IDEAL guy, is in fact, a geek. However…there's a small problem. Some guys become SO obsessed with fitting into the "geek" stereotype that the suck all the "I don't care if I fit in" sentiment right out of it. To the point where they can berate you if you defy any element of geek culture…hey, I can read web comics AND Cosmo, okay? It's too much work to go for a stereotype!

  12. Lynn says:
    Sat, 1st Aug 20099:54 am 

    You can't swallow it, but you can put it in your mouth and breath fog/smoke – because it sublimates so quickly it forms a nice little gas cushion on your tongue, so if you move the liquid around in your mouth it doesn't burn you. But I usually refer to it as "drinking", because "swirling it around in my mouth really quickly" doesn't have the same ring to it. :)

  13. Lynn says:
    Sat, 1st Aug 20099:57 am 

    …and by sublimation, I meant evaporation – geek fail, right there.

  14. S says:
    Sun, 2nd Aug 20093:04 am 

    uh i dont even watch star wars

    and i watched star trek only bcs of chris pine

    soo i prefer normal guys i think

  15. Chris says:
    Fri, 7th Aug 200912:21 am 

    What a load of donkey rectum horse shit. Girls don't like geeks. I am a geek and I haven't ever had a gf/hugged/kissed/nothing sexual, jack shit with a girl. What the fuck explains that?

  16. tammie says:
    Sat, 8th Aug 20095:37 am 

    Chris, it souds like your attitude may have a lot to do with it. Nice Geek > Angry Geek

  17. Chris says:
    Sat, 8th Aug 20098:36 pm 

    No. It is because girls probably are too repulsed by my ugly face to even give me a chance. Stupid superficial assholes!!!!!

  18. valkyrie9 says:
    Tue, 1st Sep 20099:33 pm 

    I feel like this article fails to take into account that a lot of us ladies are also geeks, and so many guys will immediately lose interest when they find out you're, say, a Trekkie that it's nice to find a guy who finds it a TURN-ON for once.

    Although, perhaps I've spoken too soon, as I've found "Picard or Kirk?" to be a rather effective way of getting seedy guys at bars to leave me alone.

  19. A. Nonymous says:
    Wed, 2nd Sep 200912:58 am 

    I’m not a reader, having stumbled on this entry by accident. I’m also not a girl, which seems like it might be important given some of the descriptions of average readers. She’s a strong woman who likes to share her strong opinions, et cetera.

    I should probably also mention that I consider myself a huge nerd, which I assume is backed up by the facts. So I may be biased on the subject.

    So anyway.

    “biologically we are programmed to respond to physical fitness”

    A-nope, we aren’t. Frankly, almost the entire field of evolutionary psychology is fishwrap and should be disregarded. Its conclusions about modern sexuality and its obvious roots in human evolution since the era of the Australopithecines are among its worst possible blunders.

    The problem is that human behavior can’t be neatly reduced to acting on instinct, unlike a cat, a dog, or a salmon. Even and especially when it comes to sex. If it were, then (being 98-99% genetically identical with all other humans) everybody would find exactly the same things attractive, which they don’t, and the same people as well, which they don’t. (There’s a certain amount of agreement about particular celebrities, but I don’t attribute that to the genes of their audience so much as careful media grooming. Personally, I find some of the ‘greats’, like Angelina Jolie and Pamela Anderson, rather distasteful.)

    The big difference between a human being and most other animals is that we have complex and fairly arbitrary standards for mating, many of them entirely wrapped up in custom and regional standards. To start off with, when it’s time for ovulation, the average woman doesn’t run off into the streets and mate with the most convenient male on the spot. And men don’t only start hanging around a woman when she’s in heat – actually, stereotypically, this is when human men most avoid potential mates.

    More importantly, though, the standards for a “genetically programmed” ideal mate CHANGE. Sometimes very quickly. For example, in the ’50s, Marilyn Monroe was considered a sex goddess although she was quite a bit heavier than today’s big names. I would personally attribute that to plastic surgery changing our collective perceptions of what a woman can and should be, just like steroids are doing for men – compare Charles Atlas with Arnie sometime. (Speaking of which, Atlas basically invented “physical fitness,” used to be you’d find ‘fit’ mates because they did physical labor.) In any case, rather than taking hundreds or thousands of years, that’s only a few generations. A less recent change? Go back a couple hundred years, and the ideal woman is even a little hefty, especially around the thighs and tummy. (The difference there is that advances in agriculture have made it much easier to acquire enough food to survive, which makes not having eaten it a distinction.)

    The recent fondness for tans over pallor is especially new, having only started toward the middle of the twentieth century. And almost completely irrational, as it turns out, because it’s a risk for certain radiation-related cancers.

    And now back to your program, already in progress.

    Of course I approve of women looking at nerds and geeks as potential partners. True enough, not quite as good at being arm candy as a bodybuilder or male model, and not as good as a brag to your girlfriends as the quarterback or the med student.

    BUT, while being a nerd or a geek is no guarantee of not being an asshole, there are a lot of sweet, intelligent young men (and women, let’s not forget) languishing under the unfair stigma placed on people who AREN’T classically beautiful or even physically fit. Superficial first impressions make a terrible bar to judge people by.

    Plus, that six pack won’t be around when he’s 40, but he’ll have kept his vocabulary.

  20. aeryn21 says:
    Mon, 7th Sep 20097:23 am 

    mmmm geek guys… my preference, actually. i think they're much more fun to be around than other "types." they bring out one's inner child — for example, my loves of "dress up" and "pretend" (it's not considered cosplay/LARP when you're 7) and hill-roling and the respect i get for my idolization of batman. *loves batman* yes, i too scour the internet for hints on the new batman movie. and i agree about the touch of "hopeless romantic" in the geeks. my BF went to go see transformers 2 with some friends and said that he even enjoyed the fox/labeouf interactions because it reminded him of us (awww….). and man candy? he IS man candy for me. but i gotta say, the fact that he wants to buff up a bit to better pull off dressing as snakeeyes has received no objections from me. :P

  21. Heather says:
    Thu, 10th Sep 20091:10 pm 

    Hmmm. As an athletic woman, I don't usually date the sports haters or the super-geeks. It's just not my thing. But as someone who is mildly intellegent, I tend to go for nerdier guys who aren't assholes. However, I do like my guys to enjoy the outdoors, too. I guess I'm a best of both worlds girl.

  22. Maitai says:
    Sun, 10th Jan 20106:41 pm 

    I was wondering what all this things, I identify myself as nerdy and geeky becos I love to be everyone with computers and electronics surrounded by them actually , but ppl like us are better bet than the rest becos we dont have time for flirting around besides we dont know how to flirt in the first place ! i dont know if its a good trait or not yet but I have always thought myself as really odd becos I really like childish things like toy guns, toy cars somtimes I secretly play with them !then when my frens were dating gals and ogling them I dont know where I used to be , maybe writing something on a piece of notepaper of a futuristic great plan,that sort of things thought these things are odds and I should grow up but after reading stuffs about nerdy people and geeks i think I am not abnormal :) of course i am not crazy ! gals seem to like me too and i have ok social life too , well I guess I should be proud of my geekiness !

  23. Maitai says:
    Sun, 10th Jan 20106:47 pm 

    adding a little more something , I think ultimately what a woman wants from a man for settling down is income generating capakity :) cant blame them though…

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