Let’s Overthink: Nerdiness, Part 2

So if we’re seeing sitcoms change their minds about what “the masculine” means, what does that mean? That depends who you ask. If you ask The Big Bang Theory, it means that pretty girls are to be chided for their “shallowness” if they don’t immediately take off their clothes for the socially awkward. If you ask Chuck, it means that the nerdy guys ought to butch up, while somehow still keeping their nerdy inner sweetness. The former is the insane, but durable fantasy that all men are entitled to a wife who looks like a supermodel, regardless of appearance, personality, or social status. Nice guys routinely whine about how hotties won’t do them, but women aren’t allowed to care about those things without being “shallow.”

Chuck’s answer is a little more novel, though. While it’s essentially the dude version of the old teen-girl movie trope of the “nerdy” 90-pound, D-cup actress with glasses who no one notices until the climatic makeover, it’s interesting in its attempt to negotiate between an outdated model of masculinity and a current one. What it shows more than anything (and this should surprise exactly no one), is that while a lot of modern men are uncomfortable in the old masculine gender roles of hyper-physicality, emotional unavailability, goofy-male-bonding homosociality, and verbally (if not physically) abusiveness to women, they still aren’t ready for full equality. The main character in Chuck is nice, knowledgeable, and comfortable with himself, but the show clearly sees him as unassertive and too willing to be subservient to women. (As is common, here “subservient”=”actually listens when they speak”).

Clearly there are plenty of red-meat-eating patriarchs still out there in the USA, but this pinpoints a problem with many young, otherwise “progressive” men. Al Bundy isn’t funny to them, because too many had Al Bundy for a father. And so they adopt a new stance: a little more sensitive, a little more metro, maybe, a little more willing to care about culture other than sports (definition of a nerd), willing to cook dinner sometimes. But the second this puts you lower than a woman in the social hierarchy, it’s time to strap on a pair and restore the natural order. On TV, this is expressed in absurd ways, ie, the inevitable episode where Chuck will learn some kung fu, but in real life it takes the form of otherwise nice, passionate, politically progressive and sensitive guys frothing at the mouth about how Hillary Clinton is a bitch/lesbian, Paris Hilton is a slut, and how Condoleezza Rice must be sleeping with Bush.