It’s hip to be square

It wasn’t cool to be a girl gamer when I was a kid – it was lame.

Girls thought you were weird and the guys thought you were a try hard. I was forced to take my geek-side underground, sharing it only with a few kindred souls.

In high-school I quickly realised that the interests inclined to fellow students at my Catholic school revolved around picking up boys. Generalisation I know, but a cliché born from some pretty hefty evidence I assure you. I certainly wasn’t excluded from that by any means – I was a teenager after all – but in addition to all the usual teen girl crap I was still a gamer and a sci-fi lover. I just kept that shit confined to the living room of my fellow gamers.

I partied most of Uni – so no anecdotes from that period. Soz.

Then I went on to work as a Beauty and Style Editor for a popular fashion mag where my double life as a geek was the butt of many jokes. They found it “endearing”, which was their way of telling me they thought it was childish.Then things began to change.

People buy iPods and “gadgets” become fashion accessories.

Guitar Hero, Singstar and the Wii get “non-gamers” gaming.

Girls are hosting tech/gaming shows and becoming sex symbols and fashion icons.The same magazines that once found gaming and tech exclusively the domain of socially inept teen dudes, start including gadget and game reviews and news in their pages.

Geekiness becomes attractive (admittedly it’s in small doses and usually done in that annoying “ironic fashion” way). Girls are wearing dark-rimmed glasses and citing game characters as their fashion influences. Fashion designers are doing collaborations with technology companies.

It’s no surprise AT ALL then that Tron has become the latest fashion trend. The makers of the ultimate hipster uniform, Opening Ceremony have released an exclusive Tron boot while Disney has invited a whole bunch of posh designers to collaborate on fashion and accessories for retail sale.

I’m all for it! Finally my two great passions – fashion and tech can be friends. (Until fashion finds a new BFF and dumps tech at a bus stop on their way to school and then tells all the kids on the bus that tech is a freak and everyone throws their lunch at her. I mean it.)

Imported from Geek in between