“Hey, remember that Sexy Geek Girl panel I dragged us to at Con? It’s getting all shades of talk on the internet.”
“That’s because Seth Green rules.”
“No it has nothing to do with Seth Green.”
“Then girls are silly. Don’t they know that entire panel was just hyperbole?”
On Thursday at Comic Con 2011 there was a panel at the beginning of the day called “Oh You Sexy Geek.” The point of the panel was to open a discussion on geek girls and what exactly made a sexy female geek…or something. This panel was right before the “Epic Fantasy” panel which was featuring George R.R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, Christopher Paolini, and a slew of other authors which I read. Because this was Con, I decided that I would sit through the Geek Girl Panel to make sure I had a seat for the Fantasy one. And Full Disclosure is……done!
Above is an actual conversation I had today with the friend I dragged to this panel. I have been noticing a huge amount of conversation regarding this panel and, upon much blog reading, I see that there seems to be a slew of feelings regarding the panel itself. Many of the comments seem to revolve around the disappointment of the panel’s ability to even come to some sort of serious discussion or consensus around the topic at hand. The panelists, made up of Bonnie Burton, Adrienne Curry, Clare Grant, Jill Pantozzi, Clare Kramer, Kiala Kazebee, and Jennifer Stuller couldn’t even seem to agree on the seriousness of the topic, with Stuller trying to have a serious (maybe too serious ) discussion while Burton and Curry were pretty much making everything a joke (maybe not serious enough?).
The panel itself seemed disjointed and without direction…which I don’t blame on moderator Katrina Hill from ActionChickFlick.com. She had a hard job wrangling the egos of some very strong and awesome women. Burton and Curry seemed to think that the problem of that “anti-sexy” geek (“I can’t believe she’s wearing that Slave Leia outfit” crowd) had to do with the girl on girl hate and jealousy which women sometime have. Stuller put forth the idea that women need to be more concerned defining themselves by and taking cues from the media. There seemed to be some dismissiveness of both points of view. Because of this disjointedness, there seemed to be no central message (or even a clear disagreement). The saving grace almost came when Seth Green was invited ask a question….leading to a good discussion regarding embracing fellow geeks regardless of gender or perceived ”time” they have spent loving their pop culture.
There was one tense moment when Chris Gore came on stage (40 fucking minutes late….way to be professional dude.) and promptly proceeded to piss off pretty much everyone on the panel with a comment about “wanting to put his penis into all the women up there.” Ok, yeah as men we ALL kind of do, but this was not the time OR place for that comment…even satirically.
Or was it?
I began to think about my friend’s comment yesterday regarding the panel itself. Without any knowledge of what has been on blogs or Twitter recently, his assumption was that the fervor of this panel had to do with Seth Green awesomely taking over what he perceived to be a ridiculous conversation which was all hyperbole. The simple fact to him that anyone took ANYTHING that was said on that panel as serious is completely silly.
This man is not usually a misogynist and yet the panel struck him as girls trying to complain about something that didn’t need to be complained about. And I guess that’s the question I take away from this. Was the panel, by nature of its disjointedness and approach to the topic, just hyperbole with no real substance? I know it didn’t mean to start that way, but through the panel itself, it obviously struck at least one member of the audience that way. And if it was hyperbole, was Gore’s comment really that off base? Because if the topic was no longer serious, wouldn’t his comment just really shine the light on that?
As for me, I’m torn. Yes, I like to look at girls who are in skimpy outfits. Yes, I also like the girls who wear Kaylee costumes…overall and all. You don’t need to show skin to be sexy, but I do love me some skin (honestly, what guy doesn’t?). I don’t know if it is really a problem that women are looked at as sex objects if they choose to wear the Aeon Flux costume (Adrienne Curry, I’m looking at you), because that is a choice that the woman is making. If you dress like that, you will be looked as sexily. But I think we are now living in a world where that is OK.
Although I do have an issue with some geek women thinking that the only way to be sexy is to wear the skimpy clothes costumes. There are plenty of sexy geek female role models which DON’T require the skimpy getup….again look at Kaylee or Abby from NCIS. Kick ass…fully clothed.
Finally, can we have an honest discussion about this if the discussion itself comes across as not serious? If the participants are seeming to make a bigger deal (on both sides of the “sexy”) arguement that it actually is, does it even warrant discussion?
For me, I hope Con does a sequel to this panel next year. This is one that I won’t be missing.
