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Geek Girl On The Street Reports: Geek Girls Unite by Leslie Simon

Published Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:00:26 -0600

Last updated Tue, 22 Nov 2011 02:02:49 -0600

Kate Kotler writes for Bleeding Cool;

I feel almost guilty slagging off (in any way) on the book Geek Girls Unite, How Fangirls, Bookworms, Indie Chicks and Other Misfits Are Taking Over the World by Leslie Simon.

I feel guilty because I don't want to be one of those women who hates on other women. I really don't. I'm all for geek girls uniting and, more often than not, any attempts to do as such are met with warm welcome from me.

However, upon being asked to review this book, I immediately bristled at the title's inclusion of the word "misfit" in relation to geeky women. As a huge advocate for "taking back the word geek," I've been shouting at the ether of the innerwebs for years that being a geek is a positive thing, to be proud of and bragged about… To have a book, supposedly representing me and my kind to the "norms", which brands women with geeky passion and interests as misfits or outcasts, makes me feel like I'm back in 7^th grade again, being made fun of for preferring to stay home on a Saturday night and watch Wonderworks with my family rather than sneaking out to go smoke cigarettes, drink pilfered beer and make out with sketchy boys down on the train tracks behind my house.

(Anne of Green Gables was on, COME ON!)

I suspect that any geek girl worth her 20-sided die will feel a similar bristling upon reading the title and introduction to Ms. Simon and !T Publishing's tome upon geeky women. My instinct was to put it down and email the publishing rep saying I couldn't review the book because reading it made flames burn, the f – it -flam – flames. Flames, on the side of my face, breathing-breathl- heaving breaths. Heaving breaths… But, as I was fairly sure the rep wouldn't get my reference and it is sorta my job to look past appearances and first impressions for substance and context, I put my hackles down and pressed on in reading.

I get what Simon is going for with this book. I do. I just don't think that she has the breadth of expertise to be the author writing a book evangelizing the accomplishments of geeky women. For Christ's sake, she includes Martha "the DIY Inmate of Alderson Federal Prison Camp" Stewart* as an example of a geeky woman who young geeklets should emulate. And, in writing this book Simon started a SORORITY** for geek girls? Um, no. No no no no no no no and, let me think for a second, no. Not to mention, she only has a cursory mention of women who love comic books (a major geek segment) and spends way more time in this book talking about film/music/book and "domestic goddess geeks" (WTF, seriously?) Not to mention she constantly refers to 12-sided die (which everyone knows is not nearly as useful as a 10-sided die or 20-sided die) and has relegated "tech geeks" to the miscellaneous chapter*** which lends an additional air of "I don't know WTF I'm talking about" to the book.

This, of course, makes me feel even worse – as I've also been trumpeting that "anyone can be a geek,"**** but in this case that statement is glaring back at me saying "Oh yeah, well how about this… Martha-friggin' Stewart."

Sigh.

I appreciate what Simon is trying to do with this book, I really do.

I just don't think it was done very well.

At all.

Which makes me sad, because I read Simon's other book (Everybody Hurts, an overview/sendup of the emo rock scene) and it made me LOL multiple times. It was good. This latest offering is just a fluff-i-fied, mainstream attempt to re-create Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders' critically successful She's Such a Geek.

And, in doing such, it is EPIC FAIL. Okay, maybe epic fail in all caps is a little harsh… but fail in small letters, for sure.

Though: If you dig really deep into the book and overlook the glaring fluffy bullshit, trying to fit the round peg of geek girl into the square hole of standards of mainstream society portions of this book, there are some good piecey-parts to be found: I appreciated the fangirl quiz, though it was way too easy. And it was great that a chapter was dedicated to glorifying women such as Tina Fey and Lucille Ball. Further, I really liked that in the fangirls section Simon gave a shout-out to Gail Simone, Bonnie Burton (two people I love) and GeekGirlsNetwork.com (a site for whom I write).

I think that perhaps this book will resonate more with a younger, tween/teen audience of geek girls who need encouragement and a little prodding to accept and embrace their own unique geek. And, for that Simon gets props… really she does. But, in the future, I'd like Leslie Simon to stick to writing funny books about music, which she is clearly geeky and passionate about (she's an editor at MTV.com), and leave the rest of us geeks alone.

Recommendation: If you have a teenaged geek girl, this would be an adequate gift for her. Not a great one, but an adequate one. Everyone else, save your hard earned geek dollars and skip buying this book. If you feel you MUST read it (so you can have something yell at me about on the BC forums) then go check it out of the library… if they have it. It gets a two and a half stars, solid 70% C from me.

*Debbie Stoller, Editor-in-Chief of Bust Magazine and author of the Stitch n' Bitch book series would have been a much better example of a DIY Geek. Especially as Debbie, to my knowledge, hasn't spent any significant time in the hoosgow insider trading. The fact that she was completely left out of this book is really a crime. Pun intended.

**Though she calls it a "guild", IMHO anything which is promoting pledging and wearing Greek letters and carrying big ass wooden paddles with those Greek letters on it is a SORORITY. And, again, there are already tons of honorary Greek organizations such as Kappa Kappa Psi (band frat) and Alpha Psi Omega (theater frat) and Alpha Epsilon Delta (pre-med frat) and Kappa Pi (art frat) and Psi Chi (national collegiate honors frat) and Alpha Phi Omega (national service frat) which geeks are extremely active in.

***IMHO, the two most significant segments of "being a geek" are technology/gaming geeks and comic/sci-f geeks. All else is a subsection. That this book smooshed comics/sci-fi into one chapter titled "fangirls" (which is another negative word), tech geeks are smooshed into a chapter with jocks, fashionistas and a weird essay about the differences between Silver Lake (LA) and Williamsburg (Brooklyn) HIPSTERS and gaming geeks are hardly mentioned at all is totally insulting.

****I take it back: Not everyone can be a geek. Clearly this book demonstrates this. This book would have been so much better if it was written by Jill Pantozzi. IMHO. Jill, you need to write a book about geeks… get on that!

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