Dear Nerd Girls: A Young Nerd Girl Needs Your Support

?I tweeted about this last night, but it’s important enough to me that I want to mention it here. It’s about a young girl named Katie, whose mother happens to be a blogger for Chicago Now. Here’s what her mother posted on Monday:

At
summer’s end, Katie and I went to Target to pick out her backpack,
lunchbox and water bottle for the new school year.  After great
deliberation, she chose a Star Wars water bottle to match her Star Wars
backpack.  

Katie loves Star Wars, and she was very excited about
her new items.  For the first few months of school, she proudly filled
her water bottle herself and helped me pack her lunch each morning.

But
a week ago, as we were packing her lunch, Katie said, “My Star Wars
water bottle is too small.  It doesn’t hold enough water.  Can I take a
different one?”  She searched through the cupboard until she found a
pink water bottle and said, “I’ll bring this.”

I was perplexed.  “Katie, that water bottle is no bigger than your Star Wars one.  I think it is actually smaller.”

“It’s fine, I’ll just take it,” she insisted.  

I kept pushing the issue, because it didn’t make sense to me.  Suddenly, Katie burst into tears.

She
wailed, “The first grade boys are teasing me at lunch because I have a
Star Wars water bottle.  They say it’s only for boys.  Every day they
make fun of me for drinking out of it.  I want them to stop, so I’ll
just bring a pink water bottle.”

OH, HELL NO. Look, I’ll poke fun at people who fill their rooms with merchandise or want to take a bullet for fictitious characters, but Katie here isn’t obsessed, isn’t insane — she just likes Star Wars. These little bastards have broken Nerd Commandment #3, which is to revere the nerd girl, and this aggression will not stand.

Katie’s mom asked for comments from nerd girls on her blog post, to let Katie know she’s not alone. Right now she has nearly 1,000 messages of support, that Katie’s been reading herself — to the point where she proudly wore a Star Wars shirt to school yesterday. But I don’t see any reason to stop there. Lady Roboteers, if you don’t mind, please stop by the blog and offer a few words of support to Katie. I would greatly appreciate it, but I bet not as much as Katie would.

UPDATE: Looks like they’ve made a new page for all the comments to Katie because the old one got too many! I don’t know how much Topless Roboteers are responsible this, but the comments jumped from 900 to 1200 on the original page since I posted this article, and there’s 60+ on the new page. Let’s keep ’em coming, folks!