iRead: Geek Girl

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve posted this feature on my blog (embarrassingly over a year ago), but now that Luna is a little older, I find myself having some time for reading again during her naps. Naturally, I’m still chugging along in comparison to my childless days, but I want to make sure I continue reading because it’s one of my life’s little pleasures. And unfortunately, the book I came to share with you all today did not bring me much of that.

Geek Girl by Holly Smale is an international bestseller, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. It’s about a geeky teenage girl that’s awkward and a little Asperger-y. She has a beautiful best friend and a mean girl at school that picks on her. She ends up being scouted by a modeling agency because *surprise* she’s really beautiful under the ugly sweaters and bad hair. Although she does not care for fashion at all, she decides to become a model and the face of a brand she has no idea about to escape her life as a “geeky loser.”

Why did I hate this book?
It’s clearly targeted at a young adult audience, and its message for the majority of the book is that if you are pretty and fabulous, your life will be so much better. The main character was a poor excuse for a female role model – wanting her life to change and thinking being someone she was not would do the trick. It also had the same stereotypical characters that you used to see in 90’s teen comedies. You know the ones: the geeky girl that becomes wildly attractive the second you remove her glasses (or in this case, chop off her hair), the geeky boy that seems like a loser but ends up giving the most useful life advice, the beautiful best friend that has everything going for her but ends up being jealous of the geek girl, and the mean girl that throws around the most creative insults (“GEEK!“). I know I may have not cared for all this because I’m not the target audience, but now being a mom of a little girl, I see these coming of age stories in a completely different light.

Also, it portrayed being a geeky girl in such a negative way. Harriet is extremely intelligent, but spouts useless facts inappropriately and does not know how to act in social situations. She cannot defend herself at all when confronted by her bully, and chooses instead to hide under furniture when she is overwhelmed. It takes the entirety of the book (literally page 349 of 362) for her to grow a back bone and finally express something with some sort of profound message about individuality. And possibly the worst moment of the entire book came on the last page, when her famous-model-boy-crush kisses her for the first time:

“And in the fraction of time before Nick kisses me and every other thought in my head explodes, I realize: I didn’t need to transform at all. My name is Harriet Manners and I am a geek. And maybe that’s not so bad after all.“

Why oh why did this amazing realization come only after a boy kissed her? And not when she herself experienced a pretty amazing accomplishment, like booking an international modeling gig for one of the biggest fashion brands? Or finally standing up to her bully? Or speaking so eloquently about self expression on national TV? Or finding the courage to do any of those things? No. She accepted herself for who she is only when a boy acknowledged her romantically.

No. No. No.
This is not what we should be teaching young girls, and it really saddened me.

Have any of you read this book?
What did you think of it? Or what do you think of it just based on this review?