Naked Nerds: With your clothes off, no one can tell you read Gaiman

What's better than looking at scantily clad ladies? An excuse to look at scantily clad ladies! With nerd burlesque, you get to allay your naked-lady guilt by pretending to be interested in them because they like comic books. Just like you, you sweaty, doughy pale thing, you! Epic Win's marketing gimmick has worked like a charm, and now losers like me know about Batman Burlesque, the latest in a string of ploys to get nerds to come watch strippers.

Just look! They dress up like characters from Batman, then take their clothes off! How original!

Nerd burlesque represents a glorious confluence of sophisticated horribleness. It's meta-bad:

First, you have the gentrification of stripping that is burlesque. Burlesque is retro and involves elaborate costumery. It's for hipsters and other college-educated white folk who like to congratulate themselves on their politically correct love for "the female enigma." Which is a nice way of saying they like looking at boobies, just so long as they don't have to feel dirty while doing it. And the bonus is their girlfriends get to feel good about the woman-empoweringness of it all. Although how naked performing is somehow better when it's stylized escapes me. Sure, they're artistes, but so are strippers. You don't see them renting space in art houses and touting their Ivy league educations.

Add the nerd factor and you get another thing I hate: The co-opting of nerd culture by the mainstream. I liked nerdhood better when it was still an uncool subculture. Combining hot girls and nerd culture is just repackaging nerdiness as capitalism for fanboys, enabling ticket sales, and giving nerd rags a way to up the hit count.

Related Posts: Naked Women Gots Brains!, Give Me G-Strings or Give Me Death, Indie Yuppies