What are the best pickup lines for scientists and science-savvy folk?…
I think I can best answer this Ask A Science Blogger question by quoting myself.
So:
Suzanne Franks, in her fabulous essay Suzy the Computer vs. Dr. Sexy: What’s A Geek Girl To Do When She Wants To Get Laid? which you can now read in the available for purchase She’s Such a Geek! Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff, writes:
When I got to college, I found frat parties dominated the social life, and I suspected that smarts might not be a high-value attribute in that scene. Nevertheless, I trotted off to the parties with all my dorm mates. At my very first frat party, a handsome boy chatted me up, until he got around to the question I learned to loathe — “What’s your major?” “Engineering!” I offered up brightly in response. He literally took a step back from me as his expression shifted from “prowl” to “backpedal” and said, “Oh, I guess you’re too smart for me to talk to.” With that he turned and walked away, leaving me stunned and forlorn. Shit. College: smart girls still not sexy.
In retrospect, I wonder if there weren’t at least a few high school boys who found me physically attractive, but intellectually daunting. There were others like Frat Boy in college, who showed initial interest and then shied away. I ended up interacting exclusively with other science and engineering students — both male and female. The geek boys were the only ones not scared off by the E-word. Plus, they understood my need to spend long hours on problem sets.
Geek boys also understood that they could use homework to hit on geek girls. I didn’t recognize this form of courtship at first. A junior electrical engineer offered to help me with my freshman graphics course – how nice of him! One of my non-geek girlfriends had to tell me he had a crush on me. With my meteorologist friend, I thought we were studying for physics, but he thought we were dating. The friendly guy who told me what the forestry major was all about and who gave me a symbolic snake plant was not just being friendly.
Eventually, I did realize that discussions of stress, strain, trusses and friction could easily turn into experiments with elastic bodies. (In fact, that’s how I met my first husband.) I had to overcome my prejudice that in Engineering-Land, the crop of boys included fewer exquisite specimens than frat-land did. Nevertheless, Engineering-Land yielded boys who appreciated a girl’s classroom statics mastery as well as her dorm room dynamics.
You’ll just have to buy the book and read the essay to find out how I got the nickname Suzy the Computer. And how I got rid of it and got the nickname Dr. Sexy.
So I guess Dr. Sexy really only tells some.