Now Playing: Red by Taylor Swift (loving him was like driving a new Maserati down a dead end street)
The major problem I have with the nerd and slut labels it that they both objectify people, in particular women.
Yes.
Both.
A slut is only valued for her body, for her sexuality and how much of it she is willing to dole out to hormonal teenage boys. A slut is only valued for her flirtatious humour and seedy behaviour. A slut is boobs and ass and a pretty face - or even more crudely, 'three holes and two hands'. A slut is not a person. Everyone knows that.
But what people don't realize - and I think you have to be a nerd and a slut to realize this - is that nerds are objectified, too. We're only brains. We're only worth as much as the number scrawled on our essays and exams. A nerd is valued by how much they can help you with your homework or the little nuggets of information that spill out that you can commandeer to make yourself sound intelligent. A nerd is also not a person - just a glorified calculator, a walking dictionary.
I love dressing up. I love being looked at. I love attention. I love being told that I'm pretty and I have nice legs and nice hair. But I know that funny feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize that your company only appreciates that, and totally forgets that you are an intelligent sentient human being with things to say and opinions to voice. I know that funny feeling because it's the same feeling you get when people only treat you as a brain, and your body purely as transport for your intelligence. It's the exact same feeling.
People always go on about not wanting to be a slut because they don't want boys to be 'just in for the sex stuff' - to the extent that they dodge 'the sex stuff' altogether, and when any poor boy tries to act on the hormones raging through him he is immediately rebuffed for 'not being respectful'. But when I was a nerd I was treated as if I had no emotional spectrum at all, and no sexuality or sexual interest whatsoever - and that was just as bad. I felt like boys were 'just in it for the nerdy stuff', that they were forgetting half of who I was.
I am a person. I am a person with a body and emotions and sexuality and hormones. I am a person with a brain and intelligence and a personality and character and a sense of humour. I am all of these things. You can't define me by just one or two of the above.
So why do we do this? Why do we treat sluts like they have no brain to speak of and nerds as totally sexless? Jealousy.
We like to look at the beautiful girl with the gorgeous body and the nice hair - or even just the ordinary looking girl with the confidence to hold a decent conversation with the opposite sex - and comfort ourselves with the false dichotomy that because she has the looks and the confidence she can't possibly have the brains to do well at school or go anywhere in life except for someone's bed. We like to look at the nerdy kid who's topping every class and sweeping every award and comfort ourselves with the false dichotomy that her good marks mean that she is physically undesirable and sexually incompetent. We don't like the idea that people can have everything.
The fact that the nerd and the slut only exist as labels eludes some people - but once you're branded you're forced to live the lie. The stereotypes associated with these two labels totally ignores who you are, your capacity for complexity. At the core of my dislike for these two labels is how they objectify people - and to me, there is no difference between being walking boobs or walking brain. It's humiliating either way.
