For those insightful enough to have long appreciated the extensive hotness of the male nerd (i.e. myself), I commend you. For years our world has been an abundant Petri dish of freaks, geeks and genetic anomalies, from which we’ve had our pick. Now, come 2010, thanks to nerd heroes like Michael Cera, Jesse Eisenberg and that wheelchair kid from Glee, geek and heartthrob have basically become synonymous. Now every normal girl thinks it’s “cool” to have a boyfriend with lanky limbs who stutters and blinks too often. Despair.
Growing up, I did very well with the opposite sex. This wasn’t because I possessed any particularly redeeming qualities (I was pretty average, like a 7), I just constantly fell for the boys no one else wanted. The rejects, if you will. While my airheaded peers were fighting over What’s His Face in the football jersey, I was hid behind the arthropod tank in the science lab, giving HJs to the captain of the Mathletes. Come prom season, when all the sluts starting dressing even more slut-like to lure the school’s handsome, non-deformed male population, I was masturbating over love letters from Stanley Reichstein, the kid with the giant hearing aids who no one would sit next to at lunch. I looked beyond the stereotype and saw the geeks for what they truly were: intelligent, loving, untapped ass.
We all know that people, like everything, go in and out of style. The 80s were all about the bad boy. Girls fawned over hunky, rebel types like Christian Slater and 21 Jump Street era Johnny Depp. In the 90s chicks jerked it to pretty boys like Leonardo Di Caprio, Freddie Prinze Jr. and homos in boybands. The millennium praised meathead jocks (and there’s too many to even recount without the onset of nausea). For decades the masses have applauded, even worshiped the absence of intelligence and good nature. Yeah, geeks experienced short success in the mid 90s, spearheaded by alternateen dreamboats like Rivers Cuomo and Jarvis Cocker, however they were still only admired by an elite few (i.e. weirdo alt. girls with heavy fringes), so it doesn’t really count. It was, for all intents and purposes, a world void of sexual meritocracy.
Then came a little movie called Superbad in 2007. This unknowingly powerful film initiated a shift in the preferred male aesthetic, and since then it’s been like real life Revenge of the Nerds. The days of Varsity Blues are over. Today it’s all about geek pride films like Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Adventureland. The biggest superhero movies so far this year were Scott Pilgrim starring Michael Cera, and Kick Ass starring Christopher Mintz-Plasse (AKA McLovin). WTF? Michael Cera is basically the world’s most desired male. Literally 99% of the vaginas on this earth wish they were wrapped around his cock. Even my mom wants to fuck him, and she’s a 52 year old radical Christian. And now, on the brink of the release of The Social Network-the computer nerd glorification film to end all computer nerd glorification films-it’s most definitely the end of the world as we know it.
The point is, society has evolved to a place where the nerd is no longer the underdog. While in the past the nerd was defined by his estrangement from all that is cool, now, he’s the hero. And though I do find it kind of annoying that I suddenly have to compete with every One Tree Hill-quoting normal girl for all the 4-eyed hotties, deep down, I’m grateful to live in a world that values the nerd. Because being smart is cool. It just is. And the fact that people are recognizing this on a global scale is restoring my faith in the human race.