"Ugly" Betties

Take a beautiful actress and make her ugly for a role. What techniques or props do you use?

1. Glasses
2. Frizzy or very straight hair (whichever is least in style)
3. Shirts with collars, a couple of sizes too big
4. Braces on teeth
5. Flat shoes
6. Makeup that looks like no makeup, or bad makeup
7. Orders NOT to smile

Then a magical transformation occurs somewhere in the movie, and the girl is suddenly beautiful. She has:

1. Ditched the glasses (usually for contacts)
2. Gotten her hair straightened, curled, or otherwise made the opposite of what it was
3. Put on something low-cut, slinky and/or sparkly
4. Gotten her braces off
5. Put on heels
6. Had her makeup professionally done
7. Smiled

You know what? Number 7 is probably the biggest transforming element in the whole package.

I look back at my school pictures, all 13 years, and I am not really smiling in any of them. I look wistful, sad, angry, detached, anxious ... never actually happy. And generally not a person you'd want to be near.

Then I see other pictures in which I'm smiling (even when it's forced), and by golly, skinny as I am, I have a double chin, which is the first thing I notice. But there's another thing: The girl in those pictures is more attractive. Even with the glasses and the lapels and the frizzy hair.

OK, sermon is over for today. Not even sure what got me onto that train of thought. Unless it was seeing those webcam images on my new netbook ... (involuntary shiver) Yep, that was it.

I caught myself looking back at me from the screen, and I'll tell you, if I didn't know me, I wouldn't have approached me! So I played with it for a bit, making goofy faces for the camera.

Some people have a knack for looking good even when nobody is looking at them. Some don't. Nerds have a hard enough time looking even socially acceptable, much less good. I wish I had known decades ago what a difference a smile makes.

Even a goofy smile.

I :heart: nerds -- sort of

Somebody loves us!

Well, one of us. Wait a minute -- as I read it more closely, the object of her affection is more of a geek than a nerd. All that computer and electronic gear. Sigh ... hopes dashed again.

Then there was this site for "Cool Nerd Shirts." Sounds like an oxymoron to me. Let's look. Ummm ... downloading ... lots of images ... downloading ... OK, it's still downloading.

See, I'm on 24K dialup. If I was a geek, I'd have satellite at the very least, or maybe I'd just plain refuse to live in an area without high-speed Internet access.

But I'm a nerd.

We all stay up very, very late

Before there were geeks, there were nerds. Geeks didn't take long to get cool, largely due to the computer factor. Nerds were the epitome of uncool.

Nerds LIKED math and science and spelling tests, HATED gym class, wore glasses, had no social skills and wore odd clothes.

Imagine if Steve Urkel was really in your class at school, only not funny and without the freakish voice. That's a nerd.

We're the ones who were late for the bus because we stayed up late to watch (the original) Star Trek. We're the ones whose pants and sleeves were always too short or too long. We're the ones with the funny haircuts and the tentative smiles in the school photos.

The interesting thing is, most of us nerds grew up to be regular people. You might not be able to pick us out of a crowd now. (Especially if we're in a crowd of geeks. Hint: We'd be the ones without the pocket protectors.)

We mostly learned to blend in, to dress more normally, to talk to people, to be more comfortable in our own skins. That last one was the hardest.

Because inside, we still see ourselves as nerds. We feel like Miss Jane and Urkel when we really wanted to be Elly May and Will Smith. Even if we look more like Elly May and Will these days, we know what we were.

So here's to the triumph of the spirit, the wisdom of age, the benediction of experience. Here's to being nerds incognito.