Unlike “cool,” the undefeated champion of slang words, “nerd” means many things to many people. It was once an insult hurled by jocks at smart kids who ate paste and never got laid. Now it’s shorthand for obsession. Whether you’re a comic book nerd, a political nerd, a vinyl nerd or any other variety of geek, chances are you obsess over something beyond the norm.
The word nerd first appeared in the Dr. Seuss Book If I Ran the Zoo in 1950. Narrator Gerald McGrew said his zoo would feature “a Nerkle, a Nerd and a Seersucker too.” It was the first documented appearance of the word “nerd,” and it wasn’t sexy. (Unless you’re into that sort of thing. We hope you’re not into that sort of thing.)
The term may be relatively new, but sexy nerds have been around forever. Sexy is subjective, of course, but at least these nerds were having sex.
My generation’s sexy nerd awareness probably began with Aly Sheedy in “The Breakfast Club,” which launched my long and painful attraction to women on the edge. She ends up with Emilio Estevez’s jock wrestler, a pairing of opposites rivaled only by the “if I can change you can change” speech Rocky gives after defeating Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.
But we can’t talk about Ally Sheedy without mentioning Wargames, the 1983 computer thriller starring Ms. Sheedy and ’80s super nerd Matthew Broderick. As David, Mr. Broderick is perhaps the first pop culture computer nerd to attract a beautiful girl by promising to change a grade on her report card. Is he sexy? I don’t know. But he’s the leading man in a movie about the threat of nuclear war who wins the heart of the pretty, smart girl in class.
One year later we saw Ralph Macchio getting his ass kicked by a group of BMX beach jocks in 1984’s The Karate Kid. He didn’t look like the cool kids. He didn’t have any money. His best friend was an old man who fixed leaky faucets in cheap apartments. Nerd? Oh, yeah. But he got the girl, he beat up William Zabka (Johnny), and he landed the cover of “16” magazine a billion times. Proving there truly is no defense against a properly executed crain technique.
Then there’s Michelle Meyrink, the actress who played “Jordan” in the criminally-overlooked Val Kilmer film Real Genius. She’s the real deal. (A little trivia: Wikipedia claims the character of “Jordan” was the basis for the animated character Gadget Hackwrench in Disney’s Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers.)
If you do a quick Google search for “sexy nerds” you’ll find thousands of women who look like extras in a Michael Bay movie. They have giant breasts and Clark Kent eyeglasses and a retro Lando Calrissian T-shirt. They’re not geeks or nerds. They’re models. (Not that looks or proportions have anything to do with geek street cred. Women and men with runway-model looks can be genuinely geeky. But nerds know when they’re being duped. We’ve had years of experience.)
Quite the opposite is Ms. Meyrink’s Jordan character – a sexy whiz kid who never sleeps and has zero pretenses. She has a good heart, a big brain and possesses the one quality that is nerdier than anything else: Loyalty. Nerds are loyal to their obsessions and their friends. They are resistant to quick impulse over new, shiny things. They make their choices and stand by them.
And that’s sexy.
