Our friend Ashley Eckstein of HerUniverse.com has dubbed 2013 the Year of the Fangirl! To celebrate, they’ll be highlighting a different fangirl every day and she’s looking for your help finding them. Take a look at the introductory video above, there’s a few rules but you can find out more and nominate someone at HerUniverse.com.

(via The Bird and the Bat)

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Comedian Dani Herd recently did stand-up at the Laughing Skull Lounge in Atlanta, George, you know, the home of Dragon*Con. That’s important, see, Herd is a geek. Her set mostly revolves around her love life and love of Fraggles. I adore her instantly. Adult language is used, you have been so forewarned.

(via reddit)

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I’ve been telling myself to stay out of this debate. I’ve been assuring myself that any time spent reading rants, posts, and their circular comments will only make me feel resentful and defensive. I tell myself that the fight is over and no one won. I rationalize that only a few people are ruining it for the rest of us and therefore, those few should just be ignored. I vow to stop drawing attention to this ridiculous creature, to stop reinforcing the idea that the “Fake Geek Girl” exists.

“Why don’t you just drop it?” “Why can’t you take a joke?” “Why aren’t you over this?” I ask myself these things too.

The truth is, I don’t know.

You might recognize Nerdache Cakes as the the young woman whose confectionary treats we feature here frequently, from an incredible birthday cake based on Gurihiru’s Baby Avengers, a set of Gotham City character cookies, to an entire cake based on one piece Avengers fanart drawn by Adventure Time‘s Natasha Allegri. In response to an anonymous poster who decided that this wasn’t enough evidence that she genuinely enjoyed the things she spent hours recreating in dough and fondant, she has created a gift for all of us.

I’m sure it will completely fix the “fake geek girl” “problem” forever. In the meantime…

It’s been an interesting week in geekdom. If you missed the most recent kerfuffle, you can catch up here. Luckily, tumblr user sailorsway (aka Meghan Danger) has created a delightful two-panel comic strip that explains why some of us ladies are frustrated. Here’s how the conversation goes between two men when a Green Lantern t-shirt is spotted. Now hit the jump to see what happens when it’s a woman wearing the shirt.

Remember Star Wars Katie? The young girl bullied by peers at school for liking the sci-fi saga simply because she was a girl? She made a splash online thanks to a blog written by her mother Carrie Goldman, who has since gone on to write a book on bullying called “Bullied: What Every Parent, Teacher, and Kid Needs to Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear.” We had a nice update on Katie late last year and she of course, continued to be awesome, but there’s a new chapter to be told. See, Katie wanted to be a Stormtrooper for Halloween this year and the 501st Legion made it happen.

You might be forgiven for not noticing any ads in Scott Snyder’s Batman #13, since the story is riveting, horrifying, and kicks off the first major appearance of the Joker in the New 52. In fact, until David Willis of Shortpacked pointed it out on his tumblr, I didn’t even notice that the back cover ad on this issue was different from the back cover ad of the three other DC comics books I picked up this week. Which is unusual, since the way ads in comics usually work is that they are the same across all of a publisher’s titles in a given month, right down to page placement. So what’s the ad hiding behind that die cut cover of the Joker’s horrifying new face?

Erika Ebbel Angle, host of the live science show “The Dr. Erika Show”, has two costume elements that should tell you everything you need to know; a lab coat, and her Miss Massachusetts tiara. The tiara in particular is a big hit with the studio audience of kids, most of them girls. Ebbel Angle, who is an MIT graduate with a Ph. D. in biochemistry, says the crown-and-labcoat pairing is meant to subvert what she feels is a stereotype about female scientists, and their presumed slovenly appearance. She wants to prove beauty and brains are possible for scientific women, and makes sure that the kids are getting the message.

But swinging too far to an emphasis on beauty is its own extreme stereotype, and Ebbel Angle’s show is seen by some as a case of protesting too much. If popular entertainment for the age group can be taken as a reasonable sample of our cultural mores, the show is speaking that language, and using it to make science more inviting. The “Princess Scientist” concept is tailored to its target audience of young girls, many of whom could be drawn to consider an area they had not otherwise. At the same time, it re-enforces an ideal of the smart, career-oriented woman who should also maintain a perfect physical appearance. It seems like, either way, there’s no winning. The real question becomes whether it is more important to appeal to impressionable would-be female scientists or enthusiasts, or to examine why this spectrum exists, and what can be done to change the perception of choices for the way women represent themselves.

Memes are hard to kill; it’s basically in their definition. And the easiest way to deal with them is really to try and ignore them. But if there’s one we wouldn’t mind eradicating from the internet, it’d be the Idiot Nerd Girl Advice Animal meme. It’s emblematic of the persisting idea that tells people it’s ok to nastily call women out for not being “authentically geeky” enough. It’s basically the idea that you can use that old middle school tactic of calling people “posers” because they don’t adhere to your own particular rules as to what qualifies a “geek,” or because they happen to have boobs and read comic books.

Dark Horse Comics editor Rachel Edidin, however, had the idea to try and turn that around a week ago, by creating a sort of anti-meme that, instead of presuming that the pictured girl is pretending to like nerdy things in order to get attention, presumes that the girl actually knows her stuff and is tired of people assuming she doesn’t because of her gender. And a week later? A quick check of QuickMeme is about half full with defiant nerd girls. We don’t know how long it’ll last, but we like it.

Move over, Barbie playhouse, prefab dollhouses are out. In an effort to increase the number of women pursuing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) related fields, three female Stanford graduates have created a DIY dollhouse that children can design, build, decorate, and wire with electricity. Roominate combines the comfort of playing with a dollhouse, a toy traditionally marketed toward girls, with new opportunities to explore circuitry, architecture, and design.