Beauty and the Geek

[Module]

Now, I was thinking about posting this in the Discrimination forum but I thought this may be slightly too trivial so that's why it's here, but no bullshit please :D

Today, I was at home all day, had nothing really to do so I switched on TV.. as one does .. (this is just to inform you that I don't usually watch TV like this :p)
And 'Beauty and the Geek' was on .. it was the semi-final episode, I'd only ever seen the ads before, but I sat down and watched it...
I wasn't sure why, whilst watching it, but it thoroughly pissed me off. The whole set up of it. The fact that there were two teams, the male 'geeks' and the female 'beauties'.
I Googled it, afterwards (yes, not only did I watch a whole episode but I Googled it later on, yes it's true :sleep:) and sure enough the show's description was; "The premise of the show consists of a group of "Beauties" (young women who have relied primarily on their looks and are intellectually inept) and a group of "Geeks" (young men who have relied primarily on intellect and are socially inept) who are paired up to compete as couples for a shared $250,000 and other prizes".
But, I didn't even have to Google the show to figure out that's what they were getting at - now, geeks by definition have to be socially inept. That's why they're geeks, but beauties do not have to be intellectually inept.

It reminded me, in fact, of a thread on RevLeft once, I'm not about to go digging for it because I can't remember what it was originally about or even how long ago it was - all RevLeft history blends into one, in my mind - but it featured this one user, a guy, who was complaining about how shallow women were, that they wouldn't shag him because they don't care about personality, or 'nice guys'.
And, that is why this show pissed me off so much - it was from that same self-pitying 'male' perspective, it ran on the premise that beautiful girls don't go for 'geeky' guys because they're so superficial, it was supposed to be some kind of 'social experiment'.
These beautiful girls were supposed to be intellectually inept, but on the show these so called 'intellectually inept' beautiful girls seemed like perfectly intelligent people.

The geeks were, of course, supposed to be portrayed to the public as being social failures, because they were nerdy men, and so the social experiment was seeing if they could pull any women strictly on personality and intelligence, rather than how 'cool' they were.
Whilst the geeks were supposedly intelligent but 'socially inept', the equivalent for the women was how beautiful they were, rather than them having personality.
Plus the fact that they were apparently 'intellectually inept'.
The show was, no doubt, supposed to challenge viewers to look at these male-failures on their own intellectual strengths, and how good people they were rather than the fact they weren't 'cool' or 'good looking', whereas for the women, they were outright judged only on how they received the men, and how they were to look 'beneath the surface', whilst only being expected to because they were beautiful women.
It just rank of sexual objectification, and as I said, macho self-pity.

If a guy can't get a beautiful girl on purely the basis of personality rather than how 'cool' he is, he has had an injustice inflicted upon him. It really is that cultural perspective on sexual relationships, that all good men deserve sex with beautiful women.
I'm not sure if I'm explaining how I feel very effectively, but either way - tell me, am I being overly sensitive, here, or do I have a point?

Oh, and that fucktard Richard lost, thank god. Chuck totally deserved the prize money.

[Le Libérer]

The producer of this show is Ashton Krutcher who is married to Demi Moore. I get the feeling his relationship with her is the total opposite of the premise of this show and he is living out a passive agressive fantasy based on his home life. :D

::takes off Freudian psycho analysis cap and places it back on the shelf.::

[counterblast]

"The premise of the show consists of a group of "Beauties" (young women who have relied primarily on their looks and are intellectually inept) and a group of "Geeks" (young men who have relied primarily on intellect and are socially inept) who are paired up to compete as couples for a shared $250,000 and other prizes".

Ironically, this is most people on RevLeft's idea of a dream date...

[counterblast]

(PS: You should've posted this in Discrimination, so I could've given you Reputation!)

[jake williams]

You actually raise quite a number of points, and I agree with a lot of them but there are big subtleties and complications and I don't have time to get into the details, of which there are many and which are very important.

One line of thinking I will suggest though. I call it the Zellers (it's a generic retail big box, sort of a Walmart) experiment because I grew up with Zellers, and I think it explains maybe the main part of patriarchy very efficiently. This is marginally less effective than it was even 5 or 10 years ago, but it still works.

You go to the toy section. The toy section at the Zellers I've seen consists about maybe 6 aisles all lined up along an arterial aisle. The breakdown is usually something like this - there's the sports section with basketballs and bikes, there's the action figure section, there's the Lego aisle, there's some miscellaneous toys, and then there's sort of a half-aisle, a side of an aisle, and that's something like art supplies, you know, paint sets - and then there's the mega hot pink GIRLS section. This section involves one colour - pink. All boxes are pink. No boxes are not pink. These are girls' toys.

What does this mean? You're presented with a dichotomy - action figures versus dolls. This is false. This is misleading for two reasons. Suppose it's actually a valid dichotomy, that boys play with action figures and girls play with dolls, or even that that's the norm, whether or not it's valid morally, it's at least valid empirically, even if it's just describing what's considered normative behaviour. Suppose all that, and just look at the colour. What's all this business about girls being interested in different colours and differentiating colours and so on? I have a history teacher who is something of a mainstream conservative historian politically, but mixes a very fanatical idea about academic purity and integrity and seriousness with an approach based on saying things he thinks are offensive, generally to question what he deems "orthodoxy". He has some big theory about, well, men are hunters and they see colour, but women pick fruit so they can see colour, and there's Studies. The millions of dollars spent on "developmental psychologists" must be staggeringly misspent then - why is it that there is so much variety in the "boys" section - it's not just black, it's not just pastel blue, it's red and orange and green and blue and black and sometimes even purple. But the point is that this isn't even the truth of it. There is one half aisle, and it's regularly actually called the Girl's section. What are the other sections then? Do girls get toys that no one else do, maybe do deal with 8-year-old PMS, and the "other" toys, whereas the boys just get the "others"? But if some toys posit themselves as girl toys, how do the others not become in relation boys toys? Even if they don't - and in fact, the scenario of girls playing with both and boys just playing with "others" or "boys toys" is increasingly the case, but this contains its own misogyny - I do think that the isolation of "girl" toys is critical to the modern preservation of patriarchy, because you can come in with this pretext of "sisterhood" but really it's about avoiding contamination of the male sphere by "feminine" impurities.

But the phenomenon of importance is I think how we classify the "non-girl" toys, or perhaps you want to call them the "non-girl toy toys" to avoid a bit of initial bias. Are they boy toys? In an important sense, yes, they are. It's not just action figures, it's and most of the "miscellanous" toys, and the sports equiptment and the non-pink bikes and the non-pink Lego (which contrasting with the "art", the latter quasi-feminine and put in with the girls toys, reflects interestingly on different conceptions and norms about how creativity manifests itself, but again, I have finite time right now) - these things are basically boys toys. You can't call them that anymore because that's crude, and you can't call out patriarchy for the same reason you're considered a racist if you make certain criticisms of racism, in fact in much the same way and for the same reasons. So they're not called anything.

It's a pretty cheap trick - they used to be called boy toys and girl toys, now it's girl toys and "other", not exactly intellectual sophistication, or real subtle propaganda. But it's also analytically useful, it provides information in another way. You don't even have to say much here, and again, time - if something isn't gender specified, it's for boys, and vice versa - a "person", a general person, is a guy, you only mention her sex if her sex is hers. The process, even just expliclity, minoritizes women in an interesting way.

It also does this last thing in a more important way. You can go back to the colours - pink vs. everything - or you can go back to the substances - dolls versus sports, creativity, fantasies from crime fighting to flying to underwater exploration, and so on. The whole point is that what is in the "girls" section is very uniform, whereas the whole rest of the spectrum of human activity is male by default, I say default because again we live with a different, more subtle, less explicit form of patriarchy right now.

And this goes back to your point. Some men are good looking, whereas others have other positive traits (ie. they can be Batman, or they can play basketball, or they can play lego, you know, the spectrum from architecture to bricklaying). Women can only be one thing - they can look pretty (ie. they just get to play with dolls). Now they can do other things, but it's not their womanness implicated, it's the fact that the patriarchal society (with which I was tempted to indentify myself, albeit somewhat ironically, with "we") has leant limited provisional personhood to women willing to exist within the male-defined public sphere. Again, you can't call it that, that's too vulgar, and to some degree it's more complex than that, but it's still basically that, and it's still defined in relation to a set "girl toy" standard that separates out a supposed feminity and does so in a misogynistic way.

Stretching the metaphor a bit, there's this presupposition that boys play with action figures - the male sexual stereotype - and, supposedly but implicitly symmetrically, girls play with dolls, the female sexual stereotype. What the show does is extend male sexuality to the whole spectrum of boy's toys - whereas the girls only get the girl toys. Especially in the sexual sphere, which is more and more traditionally patriarchal.


Again, there's a whole lot of important details and other aspects to analyze that I couldn't get into, because I have finite time right now.

[Module]

jammoe, you remind me of a documentary I watched early last year in my Society and Culture class called 'Sex and Gender'. It sucks that I haven't been able to track that down again, and I don't go there anymore and can't be bothered going back in and asking anybody, but anyway... :p
In reference to what you've said about toys - the documentary featured a study on how children are treated by their parents on the basis of gender.
Apparently when babies are first born, if the baby is a male it will be described by the parents as confident, strong, alert, and if the baby is female it will be described as fragile, pretty and soft, though there may be no differences between the two.
When children are growing up, male children are encouraged to go outside, explore, and are given toys like puzzles or tools, and females are encouraged to stay inside and not get dirty, and are given toys like dolls and mini ovens. The metaphor they used was "We give our girls roots and our boys wings".

I remember on this Myspace gender survey bulletin thing (who doesn't read those?) where you check boxes on a 'Male' side and a 'Female' side, I remember that one of the 'questions' for 'Female' was 'Your favourite colour is pink [ ]', and the equivalent question for 'Male' was something like 'Your favourite colour is either blue, red, black, green, silver ...' you get the idea. I remember reading the boy's list and thinking that half of them should be considered gender neutral things, not masculine things!
EDIT: By the way, I made a thread on this ages ago in the Feminist forum, if you want to go check it out.
But that's the point, neutral is masculine, but the feminine gender role involves all these narrow specifications women are supposed to adhere to.
And in magazine sections!!! God damn, in magazine sections :lol: the 'women's interest' is fashion, hair, make-up, bridal magazines, interior decorating, celebrity magazines. The 'men's interest', if it's actually labelled and not blended in with the rest of the selection, that is, includes things that pretty much any average human being would naturally find interesting. Science, computers, business and politics, it's often right next to if not including the music section (which is often right next to the porn section), vehicles, etc. etc. etc.
I would give a more detailed... analysis.. but it's 2.22 (heyyyy!) a.m. and I should really go to bed :lol:

(PS: You should've posted this in Discrimination, so I could've given you Reputation!)Damn it :crying:
It's the thought that counts

[chimx]

True story: I know the guy who won beauty and the geek. We played pub quiz together a few times in Montana. He's a friend of a friend more than anything. He's not even really very geeky. He's a smart guy that has a chemistry degree from Harvard or something like that, but he's certainly not socially awkward or "geeky".

[Holden Caulfield]

(PS: You should've posted this in Discrimination, so I could've given you Reputation!)


i already proposed (ages ago) her for being a mod or co-mod of the discrimination forum (im moving this there by the way) as she is great for starting and carrying out discussions on the subject, if she was still CC i would want her to be the mod

[counterblast]

I do think that the isolation of "girl" toys is critical to the modern preservation of patriarchy, because you can come in with this pretext of "sisterhood" but really it's about avoiding contamination of the male sphere by "feminine" impurities.

But the phenomenon of importance is I think how we classify the "non-girl" toys, or perhaps you want to call them the "non-girl toy toys" to avoid a bit of initial bias. Are they boy toys? In an important sense, yes, they are. It's not just action figures, it's and most of the "miscellanous" toys, and the sports equiptment and the non-pink bikes and the non-pink Lego (which contrasting with the "art", the latter quasi-feminine and put in with the girls toys, reflects interestingly on different conceptions and norms about how creativity manifests itself, but again, I have finite time right now) - these things are basically boys toys. You can't call them that anymore because that's crude, and you can't call out patriarchy for the same reason you're considered a racist if you make certain criticisms of racism, in fact in much the same way and for the same reasons. So they're not called anything.

It's a pretty cheap trick - they used to be called boy toys and girl toys, now it's girl toys and "other", not exactly intellectual sophistication, or real subtle propaganda. But it's also analytically useful, it provides information in another way. You don't even have to say much here, and again, time - if something isn't gender specified, it's for boys, and vice versa - a "person", a general person, is a guy, you only mention her sex if her sex is hers. The process, even just expliclity, minoritizes women in an interesting way.

It also does this last thing in a more important way. You can go back to the colours - pink vs. everything - or you can go back to the substances - dolls versus sports, creativity, fantasies from crime fighting to flying to underwater exploration, and so on. The whole point is that what is in the "girls" section is very uniform, whereas the whole rest of the spectrum of human activity is male by default, I say default because again we live with a different, more subtle, less explicit form of patriarchy right now.

And this goes back to your point. Some men are good looking, whereas others have other positive traits (ie. they can be Batman, or they can play basketball, or they can play lego, you know, the spectrum from architecture to bricklaying). Women can only be one thing - they can look pretty (ie. they just get to play with dolls). Now they can do other things, but it's not their womanness implicated, it's the fact that the patriarchal society (with which I was tempted to indentify myself, albeit somewhat ironically, with "we") has leant limited provisional personhood to women willing to exist within the male-defined public sphere. Again, you can't call it that, that's too vulgar, and to some degree it's more complex than that, but it's still basically that, and it's still defined in relation to a set "girl toy" standard that separates out a supposed feminity and does so in a misogynistic way.

Stretching the metaphor a bit, there's this presupposition that boys play with action figures - the male sexual stereotype - and, supposedly but implicitly symmetrically, girls play with dolls, the female sexual stereotype. What the show does is extend male sexuality to the whole spectrum of boy's toys - whereas the girls only get the girl toys. Especially in the sexual sphere, which is more and more traditionally patriarchal.


Again, there's a whole lot of important details and other aspects to analyze that I couldn't get into, because I have finite time right now.


If I understand you correctly--

Girls toys make girls become overly dependent on a sexist "othering" notion of the self, while "boys toys" leave them hopelessly in search of identity?

[counterblast]

i already proposed (ages ago) her for being a mod or co-mod of the discrimination forum (im moving this there by the way) as she is great for starting and carrying out discussions on the subject, if she was still CC i would want her to be the mod
Stop it, you're making me blush!

[Holden Caulfield]

Stop it, you're making me blush!

i dont get if you joking or not but i was talking about Des...:mellow:

[jake williams]

If I understand you correctly--

Girls toys make girls become overly dependent on a sexist "othering" notion of the self, while "boys toys" leave them hopelessly in search of identity?
No, not quite. These constructions (ie. the arrangement of the toy section) have effects, if you mixed all the toys together, especially if you took all the pink out of the "girl toys" and made them a number of different colours, or even if you went so far as to change the content and form of the toys themselves, all of these things would have consequences. But these constructions are more useful analytically if one regards them as manifestations of the culture, as examples you might say simply. Things that occur here - the "otherness" and "simplicity" of girls juxaposed with the "naturalness/presupposedness" and "variation" of boys, in this case - are things which patriarchy does in the general culture. For a range of phenomena in the society, you can come up with a theory that explains all of them pretty well. It's a case within this theory that gives you information abotu the theory. It's an "example" but it's almost like a parable.

Now I don't quite agree with your reading either. The "identity crisis" phenomenon you're talking about, the idea being that on one level it's easier to have a proscribed notion about what you're going to be than to be "overwhelmed" with choices, there's I guess a bit of truth to that. But it's not relatively significant. I happen to prefer freedom, and one of the basic assumptions of feminism is that women do too.

Also, and this is to itself a very long, complicated discussion I can't go all the way into, while there are some aspects traditionally applied to "feminine character" (which is for purposes assumed to be constructed artificially) which are positive, such as empathy and a number of definitions of "emtional intelligence", in general these characteristics put women in a position of deference and subordination, and makes them less able to develop into full people. I don't think this ideal is something people should strive for, although conversely, I don't think that its elements should be avoided as a whole, especially when it's done, as it often is, explicitly misogynistically.

[Lynx]

According to stereotype, geeks and beautiful women have different interests and are knowledgeable about different things. The snippets of the show that I saw implied the two groups were going to help each other, in order to be able to compete for the prize.

One of my favourite shows is The Big Bang Theory. Unsure if these two TV programs are comparable.

[Dean]

I'm not sure if I'm explaining how I feel very effectively, but either way - tell me, am I being overly sensitive, here, or do I have a point?

Oh, and that fucktard Richard lost, thank god. Chuck totally deserved the prize money.

No, the show is offensive filth. And just like "The Big Bang Theory" it is inundated and relies upon the stereotypes you describe.

[Prisoner#69]

Generally speaking --- geeky guys simply do not get the stereotypical hot goddess. I loved the show because I laughed so much at the geeks. They tried so hard! HAHA:laugh:

And none of the women were 10's either --- some were cute, sure, but they were vastly overdone regardless.