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The nerd/geek stereotype is kind of like these, because it is complex and not immediately visible; it requires some training. But as is not the case with “WASP” and “yuppie,” kids apply the terms “nerd” and “geek” to one another. They know it is a bad thing to be, and they know they don't want to be one, even before they know what it is. They know from other kids' intonation that it is a term of scorn, and therefore something to be avoided. It is, of course, a painful moment in the life of all kids when they hear the term applied to themselves and realize that it fits. But it is also painful for kids whom the term does not fit; those kids have to spend time trying to figure out of they are nerds or geeks, and they have another thing about which to vigilant.

Take a trip down memory lane to when you were a kid and heard a new derogatory or illicit term. For me, the prototype was when I was nine, and a fourteen-year-old sister of one of my friends said to us, “You don't want people to think you're a snerd, do you?” The way she said it made it perfectly clear that it was a terrible thing to be, but neither my friend nor I knew what it meant. Of course, we begged for enlightenment, and we were told with perfect clarity that a “snerd” was a boy who went around sniffing girls' bicycle seats. We were both way too embarrassed to ask why anyone would do that; at nine, I hadn't a clue. The term I remember from way back then has changed, of course. Now the Internet will tell a kid with perfect authority that someone who goes around sniffing girls' bicycle seats is a “gink,” or a “quibbie,” or a “snurge”; it is also an activity associated with a “nerd.” All I remember is being confused, a little ashamed, and determined not to be one of those.

American childhood is full of such moments. Indeed, shame is part and parcel of what it is like to be a kid. Grownups are well insulated from shame, and because it is such an awful thing to feel, they avoid it at all costs. But to go one step beyond Art Linkletter, kids feel ashamed about the darndest things. That, too, is what this book is about.

Talking to Kids About Stereotypes

I am a clinical child psychologist and a college teacher in developmental psychology thirty years ago talking to kids, and watching kids talk to one another, about their friendships, and since then I have talked to kids about all kinds of things: superheroes, how to remember things, death, being Good and being Bad, disease, parents, geometry, music, magic…all kinds of things. And I am privileged to be able to talk to kids about all kinds of things in a sheltered setting where they usually feel comfortable enough to open up. But talking to kid about stereotypes is not easy. That shame thing, for instance, makes a lot of kids, especially the younger ones, reticent. They think it's not okay to talk about mean things. It's kind of like swearing, and they think they're not supposed to. Speaking to six- or seven-year-olds when they are first developing the nerd/geek stereotype is interesting, but it is mighty hard to do. They get embarrassed and balky if they have heard the words, because frequently all they know is that they are bad. (They sure don't know what a pocket protector is or an SAT score.) But if they haven't heard the words, it is not at all nice being the bearer of bad news. When kids haven't really heard or thought about the terms “nerd” and “geek,” no grown-up, me included, wants to introduce them. Any kid being grilled about nerds by a grown-up will ask himself or herself, Why am I being questioned about this, and why is it so important? The first thing kids will want to do is go out and learn all they can (from their friends) about nerds and geeks.

Anthropologists know all about this and try to avoid it whenever possible: changing the phenomenon under observation by the act of observation. It makes the project, interviewing younger kids about the concept, difficult. But it is also more than a little unsettling from a moral point of view. If part of the experience of nerds is that they are unself-conscious, a good long interview on the topic can spoil all that in a second. It's kind of like being the snake in the Garden of Eden: introducing self-consciousness where it does not heretofore exist. It's not a nice thing to do.

So the interviews with kids in this book tend to be with older kids who are in high school or college, who all have been well indoctrinated in the ways of the nerd by then, have lots to say on the subject, and remember enough of their childhood to recall when they started thinking about these issues. The reported interviews with younger kids arose mostly in casual conversation about other things and tended to be brief to avoid that snake-in-the-Garden thing. But those in a position to overhear kids when they are on the playground or when they are in the backseat of the car will recognize the truth in the fragments I have been able to provide.

The Full-Disclosure Part

Full disclosures of potential conflicts of interest are all the rage on the op-ed pages these days, so why not here? Readers may want to know, is this book just some sort of special pleading? Is it the work of some raging nerd seeking revenge in his own understated, nerdy way? Don't you deserve to know if I am myself a nerd?

Happy to disclose, but it all depends on whom you ask. As noted in the following chapters, some people, especially young people, adopt a broad definition and define a nerd as anyone who wears glasses, on the theory that anyone would wear contacts if he chose to, so wearing glasses must be some sort of badge or nerdity. In that case, I am indeed a nerd; I have never been able to get used to contacts. And in a historical sense, I have certainly done some pretty nerdy things: In my fourth-grade class play, I played the part of the Dictionary. I wore a cardboard box spray-painted black with the word “Dictionary” in white letters across the front while I went around helping kids by defining words for them. I don't remember being called a nerd, but I think my classmates and I were just a little too young and, besides, the term then was “brainiac.”

In high school, I was saved by the counterculture: Just when I was sinking into terminal nerdiness as a member of the high school band, I discovered hippiedom. My long hair and enthusiastic embrace of hippie clothes and politics saved me from the approval I once had from nearby adults, the pathognomic sign of the high school nerd. And by the time I got into college, of course, it no longer mattered. So when I write of nerdiness, I know whereof I speak, although I usually spared myself the overt hostility of my classmates by being crafty. So revenge, dear reader, is not on the agenda. If it's revenge you want, go elsewhere. (I can direct you to a lot of websites where pissed-off nerds and geeks call for Armageddon in the never-ending war on jocks, but I advise you to stay away if you want a good night's sleep.)

The Plan of this Book

In the following pages, then, I hope to address the question: if you were a visitor from another planet, how would you really understand Beauty and the Geek? In the first four chapters, we take a look at the current and historical versions of the nerd/geek stereotype. What do we think nerds are, and what do our kids think nerds are? We'll inspect the landscape and try to map the cultural definitions of “nerd” and “geek” and then compare them with kids' understandings of these concepts. As we shall see, we get two very different maps. We'll also look at the concept cross-culturally and historically to find out why it is so uniquely American. In chapters 5 through 9, we'll look at the specifics of the nerd/geek stereotype, at least as defined by “Are you a nerd?” self-tests on the Internet. We'll consider the Five Foundations of nerdiness: Nerds are, by definition: (a) unsexy, (b) interested in technology, (c) uninterested in their personal appearance, (d) enthusiastic about stuff that bores everybody else, and (e) persecuted by nonnerds who are sometimes known as jocks. We'll look at research data and talk to nerdy and nonnerdy kids to find out what they think about what they think about the Five Foundations, and we'll ask whether these attributes really go together at all. In the last chapter, we'll think about what it all means. Is this something we can, or should, change? If we can't change the stereotype, can we mitigate some of its bad effects? Or should we embrace our inner Kutcher and have fun picking on people who will be our future masters while we still can? Perhaps, at the end, we can send our alien visitors back to their home planet a little more enlightened then when they arrived.