Revenge of the Nerds: Four Reasons Women Dig Geeks

When my boyfriend an­nounced that he was gett­ing Lasik surgery a few months ago, I was un­n­erved. Glass­es are my thing—one of those ob­s­cure at­tributes that im­me­di­ate­ly at­tracts me to some­body, no mat­ter how brutish or re­pelling the rest of his per­so­n­al­i­ty may be. For one of my girl­friends, it’s large veins on a man’s forearms. For another, it’s a defined jaw line (to the ex­tent that she lists Michael Bol­ton and Ed Har­ris as her top celebri­ty crush­es be­cause of it). For me, it’s a hot pair of … lens­es.

I’ve al­ways loved be­spec­ta­cled men and won­dered re­cent­ly where this par­tic­u­lar fetish sur­faced. As I dug through my in­ter­nal rolodex of boyfriends past search­ing for an an­sw­er, it sud­den­ly hit me: it’s not just the glass­es. I love the nerdy men that wear them. And I think it’s about time some­one came to their de­fense in the great, mi­s­un­der­s­tood world of re­la­tion­ships.

De­fense #1: Bad Boys Don’t Al­ways Fin­ish First
I’ve seen Re­bel With­out a Cause and all the Die Hard movies. I get it. Wo­m­en’s in­st­inc­tu­al at­trac­tion to the bad boy is sup­posed to date back to the pri­mal forces of sex and sur­vi­val. How­ev­er, as far as I’m con­cerned, we’re above the ooh-ooh, ahh-ahh Nean­derthal role-play­ing. We don’t need some bulky bad boy to save us. Ex­it hulk­ing brute. En­ter sen­si­tive geek.

Geeks equal out the play­ing field in re­la­tion­ships again. Rather than men main­tain­ing this archa­ic fan­ta­sy of a bruised up meat­head with an anger ma­n­age­ment problem and a mo­tor­cy­cle, a geeki­er breed of men ac­tu­al­ly bring ben­e­fits to the table. For one, he will not act as if he’s been shot up with tes­tos­terone ev­ery five min­utes, or deal with his feel­ings by means of drag rac­ing. There’s a sen­si­tiv­i­ty there that the bad boys are severe­ly lack­ing. A geeky com­panion will be much more like­ly to open­ly dis­cuss an is­sue with you, rather than act­ing pos­ses­sive and/or hitt­ing the check­out clerk for telling you too nice­ly to have a good rest of the day.

Over­all, rather than lett­ing inse­cu­ri­ty rear its vi­o­lent head, a geek is more at­ten­tive to what’s re­al­ly im­por­tant … you.

De­fense #2: Is That Your Pro­trac­tor in Your Pock­et? Geeks Are the Best Lovers
Grant­ed, most wo­m­en love a man who can open­ly watch The Note­book and talk about feel­ings. But there are other needs that geeks ful­fill that ex­tend be­yond movie night. A re­cent Bri­tish sur­vey of 2,000 wo­m­en and men re­vealed IT geek to be at the top of a list of lover­s’ oc­cu­pa­tions, as re­port­ed by The Sun news­pa­per. Ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, IT geeks were ranked so high be­cause they were found to be the most self­less and ad­ven­tur­ous lovers, as well as much more open to us­ing tech gad­gets (ahem) out­side of the of­fice. Even more spe­cif­i­cal­ly, the sur­vey found that 82 per­cent of IT “geek­s” in­ter­viewed said that their part­n­er­s’ plea­sure was the most im­por­tant thing to them.

(Fit­ness work­ers, by the way, scored low­est among all those ques­tioned, with on­ly 41 per­cent ad­mitt­ing to car­ing about their part­n­er­s’ needs—ready to switch your six-pack for four eyes, yet?)

De­fense #3: In­tel­li­gence—A Cru­cial Piece of the Pi
It’s no co­in­ci­dence that Mill­house is the best Simp­sons char­ac­ter, or that ge­nius Bill Gates re­mains one of the world’s most fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple. In­tel­li­gence is un­de­ni­ab­ly at­trac­tive, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it’s genuine and in rar­er cas­es, mod­est. Al­though some­times we tend to adore the more ob­vi­ous choice in movies and mag­azines, we’ve se­cret­ly loved the smar­ty-pants for years—Richie Cun­n­ing­ham was al­ways our lead­ing man on Hap­py Days, not the Fonz, and which of Steve Urkel’s per­so­nas got Lau­ra at the end of Fam­i­ly Mat­ters? Cer­tain­ly not the sul­try Stephan, but rather, the sus­pen­der-clad Urkie.

As bright, so­phis­ti­cat­ed wo­m­en, men­tal sti­m­u­la­tion is just as im­por­tant as phys­i­cal in our re­la­tion­ships. And geeks can give us both. We want to be chal­lenged in our din­n­er date dis­cus­sions about for­eign pol­i­cy, and un­der­s­tood when we ex­plain just why the pheno­menon of Pi de­serves its own na­tio­n­al day over dessert.

Even in times when we don’t know it all, who bet­ter to call to check out our hard drives af­ter a com­put­er gl­itch? How good is it to have a boyfriend who can fix your din­n­er and your iPhone on a Fri­day night?

De­fense #4: Geeks Know Who They Are and How to Rock It
Napoleon Dy­na­mite was­n’t an in­s­tant cult clas­sic for noth­ing. Not on­ly are we in­st­inc­tive­ly drawn to the un­der­dog, but any­one who could­n’t fall in love af­ter that Jamiro­quai dance se­quence clear­ly has a heart of tin. Napoleon is the per­fect ex­am­ple of why geeks should rule the rocky wa­ters of our hearts. Un­cloud­ed by pep ral­lies and pop­u­lar­i­ty, he knew ex­act­ly who he was and stayed true to it, as he fa­mous­ly ad­vised Pe­dro about his cam­paign speech, “Just fol­low your heart, that’s what I do.” In the end, it al­ways pays to be with some­one who knows and ap­pre­ci­ates who they are, so that they, in turn, can love and ap­pre­ci­ate you.

Ev­ery­one has her own tastes when it comes to her sig­ni­f­i­cant other, but I’m go­ing to argue that when it comes to blam­ing in­st­inct, we’ve got it all wrong. It’s not the bad boy that we na­t­u­ral­ly pine for, root for, or even search for. It’s the one most like us, who snorts when he laughs or wears his pants just a lit­tle too high and to the left. Be­cause re­al­ly, how many of us are in­her­ent­ly the jock or the prom queen at the end of the day? Is­n’t there a lit­tle nerdi­ness in all of us?

First pub­lished June 2009