In o/Radfemmery earlier, there was an amazing post and discussion about the phenomenon of girls being led to believe that it’s their duty to give the nerdy or ugly guy a chance to prove that they are not shallow. This pressure is seldom put on men, who are congratulated for bagging a hottie. They are not socially chastised for ruling out “fatties and uggos” from their dating pool, even if this description matches them and they should be grateful for any female attention at all.

If an ugly or awkward man does manage to get a very attractive girlfriend, it’s common for that kind, generous woman to assume that he realizes his insane good luck and that he will show his appreciation, daily and forever, by treating her incredibly well. The comments on this post were full of women sharing their experiences with giving men like this a chance, and learning quickly that they actually treat attractive women worse than a hot guy would. The low-effort guy with the beautiful woman doesn’t see it as “dating/marrying out of his league,” but as dating and marrying within the league he always deserved to be in, and he becomes a huge tyrant in his modest castle.

Content creator Shallon Lester calls this phenomenon “Kill the Cheerleader”, where a man takes out all his unresolved anger at the pretty girls he saw as out of his league or unobtainable in adolescence on the real, flesh-and-blood beautiful woman currently in his life. He literally cannot let go of that resentment and deals with it by tearing down a beautiful woman and “putting her in her place” for (presumably) choosing attractive jock boogeymen in her youth.

I personally threw a few short, ugly, nerdy guys a bone when I was a doe-eyed student with an eating disorder. My self-esteem was low and I didn’t see myself as any kind of prize. Looking back at old pictures, I was SO beautiful, and so sad! And these men treated me horribly. The final shit man I dated before I met my husband actually sicced his friends on me over a weeks-long harassment campaign to make me feel as worthless and horrible about myself as possible. They gangbanged my social media, posting in front of my family and all my friends that I’d never find another amazing dude who would love me like “Mitch”.

(I found one better, and it only took a few days. Our 11th anniversary is coming up which we plan to celebrate with our three gorgeous, genetically gifted children.)

I remember vividly watching movies growing up where the nerdy, geeky guy was the real hero all along. His cleverness and sensitivity prevailed where the brainless brawn of the woman-hitting jock faltered. Being a little goth girly, I gravitated toward the work of Tim Burton specifically, who LOVES to frame his heroes and villains this way. I cried so many tears for poor misunderstood Edward Scissorhands, bullied by big nasty bad jock Jim. I cheered and wept when Edward Bloom proved his love to Sandra in Big Fish instead of his big nasty bad jock rival. I felt tremendous satisfaction when Victor overcame the big nasty bad probable Victorian jock Lord Barkis in Corpse Bride, while honoring his commitments and promises and even being willing to die to do so! What glorious men. What utter fantasies.

Anyway, I was wracking my brain trying to recall movies that did the nerdy weirdo getting the girl really right, and I remembered a quiet little indie film that was a sensation when it came out, if a bit of a flash in the pan: Napoleon Dynamite.

While Napoleon Dynamite is very much a product of its time, it’s aged surprisingly well. Napoleon, a mouthbreathing Idaho highschooler, is by all metrics a huge dork who figures he has no “skills” that a girl might find impressive. We get to see him befriend and support a quiet outsider, as well as kick some real butt in a Future Farmers of America competition. He is in the Happy Hands club at school, a group that uses American Sign Language to very literally interpret sappy song lyrics. You might recognize these as community-building skills that develop empathy and high social intelligence. Women would, and do, value them, but men are likely to mock them even in a state like Idaho.

Napoleon is actually extremely likable, and his frustrations with his dopey, embarrassing family make him sympathetic and relatable! Inspired by his friend asking the prettiest girl in their class to the school dance, he asks the second-prettiest girl. He considers himself an impressive artist, so he draws a WILDLY unflattering portrait of her in pencil, emphasizing that he spent “like an hour on the shading of her upper lip.” She’s understandably put-off, but her mother pressures her to be kind and go to the dance with him, which is ultimately extremely hollow because it’s clear this girl is unhappy and coerced and she leaves his side immediately at the dance to join her friends.

I LOVE that the movie never frames the girl as awful for this, and instead lets the audience understand that while she’s trying really hard to be nice and fulfill the obligation of a pretty, kind, not-shallow girl, the position she is in is not her fault or her obligation. She is not a prize for the dorky guy, no matter how much the audience has come to understand and root for him.

Napoleon gets his ACTUAL nerd victory when he has the courage to… wait for it… take a big, humbling risk in front of a school full of judgmental peers, reaping the reward of a new skill he works very hard to acquire in support of a friend he cares about. This impresses the more average-looking girl who already likes him, who is a bit of an oddball herself but intelligent, kind, and a very good fit for him in temperament and personality, with skills he doesn’t possess but complement him well. He falls in with a group whose love language is “acts of service” even when none of them are very eloquent or charismatic, and he steps up with thoughtful grace for them when he sees a need.

There is another romantic relationship involving Napoleon’s older and even dorkier brother, Kipp, that I think was clever to include for contrast. Through the entire movie we’re led to believe that the ridiculously nerdy and gullible Kipp is being catfished by someone online whose tack is transparently unbelievable to a reasonable person. At the end we find out that his online girlfriend is not only real, but a total smokeshow who is not put off by Kipp’s shortness or whiteness and in fact embraces everything about him while finding him incredibly attractive. The implication is that while Kipp is cringey, there must be spectacular hidden depth to him that’s demonstrated entirely off-screen. It’s funny because it’s so unrealistic. This is like watching Back to the Future and seeing George McFly as a finished product, not someone his son literally had to work over via time travel to have a shot at agency and resilience.

There is a third relationship in Napoleon Dynamite that’s often overlooked. Napoleon and Kipp’s uncle is a bitter middle-aged has-been who dwells on when his shoulder wasn’t blown out and he could throw a football really far. He had a girlfriend who loved him and treated him well, but she left him because she felt he lived too much in the past. This character is consumed by a possible future that’s long since lost, and even though he tries very hard to feel like he was too good for the woman who left him, he is clearly heartbroken. In the ending montage, we see his girlfriend walking her bike up to his trailer, and that he is overcome with happiness that she has returned, dropping the superior act in a heartbeat.

I love how this movie takes three versions of the “unconventional and uncool man who scores” and makes him work and humble and gentle himself for it. That was always the deal.

The sleeping dragon in the mild-mannered nerd is part of what makes the trope appealing, to the point where many women take it for granted that every nerdy meek guy has that in him (few do), and every nerdy meek guy figures he already fits this trope (even if he has never experienced any kind of call to action or desire for self-improvement.) Men who take the time, effort and reflection of Napoleon are worth waiting for. The rest still have work to do.