staceyjoy:

I’ve been marinating on this for the last few weeks, but something this past weekend really kind of got under my skin and now I feel compelled to say something about it.

A few months ago, this girl who is the daughter of some family friends made a post on Facebook about how she was excited that a book she enjoyed as a child, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, was being made into a movie. She followed this statement up with an (incorrect) observation that “I’m a total nerd, I know.”

Girl, no. No you are not. You are fucking literate. You are EMBARRASSED of your literacy and are passing it off as nerdiness because to you, the idea of enjoying books is kind of weird because none of your friends read anything that isn’t posted on TMZ.

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I always feel weird telling people what they are and are not, especially with an identity category as fluid as “nerd.” Also, I never got the sense that being a nerd was about what you like, but about the intensity with which you like it compared to what’s deemed socially acceptable. This is why you can like science and not be a nerd (if you like it a “normal” amount in a “normal” way, like if you like to watch Planet Earth when you’re a little drunk), and like sports and be a nerd (if you like it more than a “normal” amount or in an “abnormal” way, like if you not only believe that Kobe Bryant is overrated in crunch time, but run multiple regressions to prove it). As always: social construction of reality, y’all.

Anyway, this is also to say that earlier this summer when I should have been reading, well, The Social Construction of Reality, I read American Nerd: The Story of My People, which is a pop sociology book that’s pretty decent, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into. The author traces it all back to the Enlightenment and the social separation of the head and the heart, with the nerd conceived of as all former and no latter. There’s probably something there.