(Reprinted from the Man Blog)
Maryam, wife of powerblogger Robert “Scobleizer” Scoble weighs in on why geeks make good partners. Reason number one goes:
He can fix your computer. There I said it. Do you really need another reason? He is not a bum. He has useful skills that can make your life (at least the part that is spent on the computer, and let’s face it, that is where we all spent most of our time any way) run smooth.
Well, that is at least something.
Straight-out endorsements of geeks and nerds as mates are still rare, especially in mainstream culture. It’s tragic but not at all surprising. We’ve got thousands of years of social evolution working against us.
Sociobiology traces cultural phenomena such as the “traditional” female preference for hunky chunks to sheer genetic advantage. Our ancestors needed to hunt their food to survive. Ergo, big-chested males who can hurl stuff well can hunt better, get more food. Naturally, these males tend to have better success in finding mates (for young prehistoric girls, “finding the one” meant “finding the one who can bring a large chunk of caribou back to the cave”), and then sustaining offspring. Offspring, it turns out, who either grow up to be big-chested males or girls who dig big-chested males (or hell, big-chested girls who hurl stuff well - isn’t inheritance fun?). Genetic advantage reigns in cultural preferences, and reinforces them. You’ve got pretty much the whole of literature and media masturbating over muscled males.
So woe indeed for the lanky (or chubby), computer geek or DnD enthusiast. But all is not lost. Cultural preferences may have lagged behind, but they do catch up eventually. Specialization is the name of the game in evolution. It may have made sense to be a good hunter back then, but the repertoire of adaptations that will help a guy throw a spear good, or shoot that ball, or hammer that divot into the ground makes less and less sense in a world where economic success (and thus genetic advantage) is increasingly dependent on processing information. So geeks of the world unite, I guess. We have nothing to lose but our inferiority complexes.
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