MTV Gets It Wrong With Nerds
Latest“My nerd cred is attacked all the time. People think that that was fabricated by MTV. That’s the hardest rumor for me to deal with,” says Liz Lee, star of the faux-reality show My Life as Liz. Boo-fucking-hoo. With over 200,000 Twitter followers and a second season of her own show on MTV, it’s stupid, and frankly insulting, that this girl is still insisting on calling herself a “nerd.” But she’s not the only one to do so. CNN has a story about the evolution of the “MTV nerd,” using Lee as the embodiment of this.
On the first season of her show, Liz decided to become a nerd, after she was unhappy with being part of the popular crowd. But the thing is, being a nerd is not something that you choose—it’s something that happens to you, decided upon by your peers who regard you as beneath them, a loser, a weirdo. The criteria for qualifying is subjective to region, age group, and other various factors, but the results are always the same. Nerds are social lepers. Nerds are picked on. Nerds are unfuckable. Liz is popular, sought-after, and hot.
Look at this fucking hipster.
Slim with a flawless complexion, trendy haircut, Ray Bans, and a wardrobe of short-shorts, vintage dresses, and skinny jeans, there is nothing about Lee that is maligned, particularly on this new season of her show, which finds her attending college in New York City—a place where even actual misfits can find a niche in which to feel cool—and caught in a love triangle (however manufactured by MTV). It’s kind of offensive that she wants so desperately to co-opt the one thing that seemed guaranteed to be left alone by cool kids—the pain of being afflicted with nerdiness.