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Best-selling authotrix Mary Roach joins us this week on JJGo episode 173.

Action items:
What was the craziest parental revalation you ever received?
Tweet like a MF with the hashtag #JJGo - let's beat MBMBaM.

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The bums will always lose.

Jesse,
At the very least, your son's rebellion will include jorts and flip-flops.

HAZAA!

New Bunny Day! ft. a Kitten.

Love it!

Oh man I love Mary Roach. Her TSOYA was great and her JJGo was great. Her excusing herself during the nerd-ery? Yes!

The conversation about nerd authenticity and Olivia Munn was interesting. Among any demo where commerce and fandom start to mix, the authenticity question starts to become very real - advertisers stand to make real money if Olivia Munn can be an appealing television personality and a nerd capable of selling things to other nerds. I'm a little uncomfortable with Olivia getting targeted (though not with you guys talking about Olivia getting targeted) because she's a lady - there's plenty of dudes or non-gendered entertainment entities which may or may not be authentic nerdery (Big Bang Theory comes to mind).

Truth be told, I don't know whether Olivia is a nerd or not because I'm increasingly finding I have no clue what a nerd actually is. When I use it to describe myself (which I sort of feel uncomfortable doing in the first place - it's mostly a convenient short hand), it's always qualified - I'm a "comedy nerd" or a "public radio nerd" or a "policy nerd", but never just a nerd.

Olivia Munn's book convinced me she's a nerd by my definition. Which is basically "If you got beat up in school for being a nerd."

Never high school, but certainly in Jr. High. Do I still count?

Absolutely. I leave the definition of "school" purposely vague, because some kids got beat up in first grade for being nerds, then learned to hide it. Basically, I just don't want the popular kids to have the badge of shame that should rightfully be earned.

Would the end point of Superman's boners be any less dangerous for Lois Lane in space?

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My duet with my cat Yoko: http://khu.sh/songify_4ff28357361cf&v2

I welcome the return of one of my favorite JJGo segments: Jordan's frustration with bunny calendar talk.

I think a lot of the "girl-who-is-one-of-the-nerd-guys" pressure comes from that weird double-standard that still exists wherein Girl Hobbies = Trivial, Guy Hobbies = Serious. That's an oversimplified way of saying it, but it does play out that way in nerd culture, too.

And I think it isn't helped by well-meaning guys who think they need to curate their ladyfriends' tastes (I think you had a caller a few weeks ago ask for advice on this?). It feeds into this idea that women HAVE to start liking the things guys like to get that quality time with them, and men don't have to, because women things are trivial (nevermind that some guy things are trivial). It's like the curious thing I noticed when a lot of my female friends got married -- suddenly, they all had fantasy football leagues, even though they had no interest in football as far as I knew. But not a lot of guy friends reciprocated by suddenly being into, oh, I don't know, Project Runway.*

NOT to say that it's an absolute and it happens like that all the time. It doesn't. But I think that's where the trend is, and that's why you get that nervous girl who felt the need to spout her nerd cred to a guy who was clearly just being an asshole to her. Plus I think it's a self-confidence thing. Maybe in my early 20s I would have done the same (tried to prove I was more like one of the guys), but the closer I get to 30, the more comfortable I am with saying, "Yeah, sometimes I spend a rainy weekend blowing through a season of the Gilmore Girls and snuggling with my cat. I do what I want!"

*Actually, my brother totally got into Project Runway because of my SIL and me. He started making fun of us for watching a marathon, and then all of a sudden he was like, "Actually... I kinda like this." So it does happen both ways. No absolutes.

ETA: This also isn't to say that women can't develop genuine interests in typically male hobbies and vice-versa independent of all this. Though our culture tends to put more value on the former than the latter.

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Semper ubi sub ubi - Cicero

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Great episode! Mary Roach is a charmer, and the return of New Bunny Day warmed my heart.

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If you don't shape up, I'm going to dock your space pay!
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Gilmore Girls is the shit! I watched every episode in my early 20s. I'm a guy, btw.

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I bypass the "nerd hobbies while possessing ovaries" problem by being best friends with a nerdy gay boy. I feel less of a pressure to "prove myself" due to sexual tension, and we enjoy nerd things AND girly things together. It's wonderful when you have RuPaul's Drag Race AND Dr. Who in common.

Getting picked on or beaten up as a child is a bad criteria for several reasons. 1) Awkward academically inclined girls with strange hobbies don't get beaten up. They just get mercilessly teased.
2) Everyone gets picked on at some point in middle school. You get picked on for being pudgy or skinny, rich or poor, wearing turtlenecks or wearing short skirts.

Is it naive to think that the nerd-lady-hostesses aren't just for dudes? Like, I know all signs point to pandering to guy nerds, but isn't there something to be said for (especially nerdy) male self-obsession that might neglect the fact that actual female nerds exist in the real world and wouldn't mind seeing (sexy?) versions of themselves on tv?

Likely I am giving tv too much credit.

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Yeah, see.

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