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The awkward revolution: Why goofy is in

BY YUSHA HU

In print | April 24, 2008

My goal today: explain why girls swoon over awkward boys, even beyond the confines of our arboretum. It’s my last column … I think it’s time to share one of my crazier ideas.

The-ambient-medium

THE AMBIENT MEDIUM

Awkward wasn’t always in. There was a time when stars like Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant stole women’s hearts. These were manly men: urbane, well-dressed and smooth gentleman with strong jaw lines and distinguished faces. Standing next to one of our new movie stars (for hyperbole, let’s imagine Michael Cera, the awkwardly sweet co-star of Juno, Superbad and a longtime cast-member of Arrested Development), Cary Grant would probably be mistaken for his dad.

Sure, we still have the George Clooney-Brad Pitt alliance to meet nation-wide demand for urbane men to fantasize about, but there is also an undeniable trend in the opposite direction. You can see it with the popularity of Seth Cohen, the video game-playing, self-conscious hottie of the now-defunct phenomenon, “The O.C.” Jim, hero of “The Office,” is cute, disheveled and goofy. There’s also an unexplainable aura of coolness that surrounds the otherwise completely dorky and socially inept engineers of Google, Inc. (see the NY Times article, “Can Google Come Out To Play? ” from 12/31/2006).

Even some of our mainstream movie stars, like Tobey Maguire, have an undeniable edge of awkwardness. Some, like Hugh Grant, make a living by playing the same bumblingly awkward British guy over and over again. Why has awkwardness in the male sex become so attractive?

I blame the creation of the Internet. Why? First, because the Internet (and the entire complement of technology that has vastly increased the speed and volume of communication and information exchange) has changed what it takes to become successful in society. Second, because, on a populational level, women invariably prefer men who are successful in society. As a result of changes brought on by the information age, awkwardness has become an honest indicator of future success, and that is why it has become a popular characteristic in men.

In the past, businesses typically achieved power through increases in size. But the internet has made it possible to move away from the “big, structured, does everything in one place and under its own roof” model (that’s the technical term, by the way) to a model that instead emphasizes intelligence, innovation and quickness to adapt and change. The Internet has lowered transaction costs so that it makes sense to have a smaller company that doesn’t do much of what it produces, but instead interacts with the rest of the world to create value.

Necessarily, the primary characteristics of successful business people have changed from someone who thrives in a company characterized by hierarchy, structure and power through size to someone who thrives in a company built on the ability to be emergently creative and original, a firm that can dart to the front and stay there through sheer brainpower. I’m not saying that there aren’t successful big companies (very demonstratably untrue), but that the approach has changed, even for those large firms. The key driver for most businesses is now not size, but innovation. And to be innovative, I argue, requires a certain goofiness to your personality, something that lets you think outside the box and be original. And that trait, that weirdness, can often manifest itself as awkwardness in everyday life.

Innovation also goes hand-in-hand with increased education as a sought-after characteristic. Education has become increasingly important as America becomes more of a service economy and it becomes harder to make a living without a college education. Of course, those who excel in an academic environment are often nerdy and by extension, awkward.

So now we have two drivers: the increased selective pressure for innovative people and the increased selective pressure for people who can excel in academic environments. Both of those characteristics have a tendency to be associated with awkwardness. Look at Bill Gates, the model businessman and philanthropist of our era. Huge geek. Quite awkward.

So, accordingly, women’s tastes have shifted to make room for this group of nerdy, innovative elites. Happiness, true love and all that stuff aside, women are attracted to characteristics in men that will lead to the best conditions for themselves and their offspring, be it good genes, financial stability or high status in society. Awkward is in for a reason, and that reason is the information age.

Yusha is a senior. She can be reached at yhu1@swarthmore.edu.

Discussion

Stephan Lefebvre
5 months ago

I’m shocked and deeply disappointed in the Phoenix for allowing a blatantly heteronormative, insulting article to be published on their last issue for the year. Writing such as this erases the experiences of queer people, and the misdeed is in no way excused by the article’s status as opinion.

In the first sentence, which incidentally states her objectives for the article, Yusha constructs desire as necessarily between a man and a woman, clearly “one of [her] crazier ideas.” She refers to changes in “women’s tastes” as if completely ignorant of homosexuality, repeatedly emphasizing the biological benefits for one’s “offspring” that comes from aligning desire with “characteristics in men.” This is enraging, but also confusing… four years of Swarthmore culminates in this filth?

What I’ve said thus far has probably been noticed by many non-queers, and perhaps not a few have conversed about it among their friends. (This might be my idealism, but I think a well educated hetero should, upon reading this article, get a sick feeling in their stomach.) More interesting, to me at least, is the author’s failure to address gender performance in her analysis. Instead of celebrating how pop culture has expanded its category of ‘sexy man’ to include effeminate actors, such as Johnny Depp, Yusha creates a forced parallel between awkward men and the information technology revolution.

My objection to her suggestion does not come from an unfounded bias against economics, but a serious concern for the implications of her argument. Constructing a system in which capitalism regulates [heterosexual] desire or, more accurately, a system that conflates capitalism and straightness terrifies me. Can it be that a Swarthmore senior hasn’t heard the word hegemony?

Yusha Hu
5 months ago

I clearly do limit my analysis to heterosexual females. I don’t see a problem with that. If we can also write articles that limit the subject matter to queer people, I don’t think it’s wrong to write an column that limits itself to heterosexual females (and clearly identifies itself as doing so).

What I find surprising is that you don’t seem to pick up on or take offense at other aspects of this analysis, which can easily be taken as implying that women depend on men for financial stability and high status in society. That’s not actually what the argument implies, but I would expect objections on feminist grounds much more than on the fact that I didn’t write a column that addresses every aspect of society at once.

I also don’t think you realize that what I wrote is a parody of social Darwinism, and that the foundations of this column are in biology and evolutionary theory, not sociology. It’s meant as an entertaining and thought-provoking column that’s maybe even funny. As a hypothesis, I am perfectly aware that it is untestable and that there are many other possible interpretations of any aspect of what I bring up. I would hope that people question the positive implications of the information age, its connection to globalization, the implications of the analysis on feminism, and of course, on sexuality. But really, this is just meant to be an entertaining read, and I think the majority of people are able to take it as such.

I hope The Phoenix continues to be a forum for discussion and diversity and I appreciate constructive discussion and criticism about any of my pieces.

Peter '11
5 months ago

Reader’s Digest Version:
Stephan: Evolution is totally heteronormative, wah!
Yusha: You’re a tool, but I’ll be polite and explain how an intelligent person might have reacted to my piece.

Seriously, Stephan. You’re of course free to express your opinions and it would be one thing if you wrote your own article critiquing evolutionary theory and examining how homosexuality could or couldn’t fit into it (and construct a theory of life that’s better than Darwin’s, if you’re so inclined), but criticizing a piece that works within the framework of evolutionary theory for being heteronormative is just ignorant and ridiculous, especially since she’s trying to “explain why girls swoon over awkward boys” and nothing more.

Then you speak about “the author’s failure to address gender performance in her analysis” as if she fails to address something simply because she wasn’t writing about exactly what you wanted her to. Writing about effeminate actors would have been an entirely different article, and while it would be interesting and you could write it yourself (once you’re done reinventing evolutionary theory), the world (or even the Phoenix) would be pretty boring if everything ever written met your inane and self-involved seal of approval.

Comments are closed.

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