This thread has made me think of someone I heard on NPR a while back. He was talking about how schools/children today are more stratified and cliquish than in the past.
One of the points that he made was that, 20 years ago or more, anyone that was brainy or not socially adept was termed a 'nerd' and that was it. They comprised something like 5% of the school population more or less. Today there are 31 flavors of 'nerd' ranging from geek, to spaz, to dork, to freak, to goth, to you-name-it depending upon which aspects of their personality was above or below the peer-based standard.
So 70% of school children are now 'nerds' and the remainder are 'normal' or 'popular' or 'jocks' or whatever, which is impressive. How can a majority still be filed as inferior or ridiculed?
If you look at TV, the fat, clumsy, funny guy gets the hot chicks and many of the world's richest people are nerds. I think that ugly nerdy females are really the folks getting the raw deal.
