Real-Life Geek Girls That Rock

Felicia Day

This Renaissance woman always tops my list. If this list included guys, she’d still top it! She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a double major in mathematics and violin, and that was after turning Juilliard down.

She came into view in two ways – through acting in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s later seasons, and then through the self-written and produced web series The Guild. Day had been a World of Warcraft player for two years, and used her personal experience as a gamer to create The Guild – a funny (and sometimes sad) web series on the WoW addictions of six people. As the writers’ strike hit, Joss Whedon started production on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a web series that took direct inspiration from The Guild. Day starred in Dr. Horrible as Penny, the love interest.

These days, she’s guest starring on Eureka, starring in a Syfy movie called Red, doing voices for games like Fallout: New Vegas, and being an insanely nice person.

Cleolinda Jones

An American writer and blogger, Cleolinda is an Internet sensation. She started a Livejournal blog called “Movies in 15 Minutes” in 2004, and her highly intelligent, funny movie recaps have made her a known name on the web. In 2005, she published a book of movie parodies called “Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Hollywood Blockbusters For People Who Can’t Be Bothered”. You can often find entries in her personal blog that show her views on pop culture brilliantly, succinctly, and hilariously (and with far less adverbs).

In addition to this, she also runs original fiction on her LJ called “The Secret Lives of Dolls”. Cleolinda is a collector of dolls – ah, we mean collectible movie figurines – and when the lights go off, they live. It’s a multi-fandom joyride, including everything from Lord of the Rings to His Dark Materials to a hilarious takedown of Twilight’s main characters. It’s crackfic at its best, and Jones’ wit and intelligence land her squarely on this list.

Jane Espenson

You may not know her name, but if you watch sci-fi television, you’ve been on the receiving end of her talent. Her real start came on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where she made a name for herself. The Buffy episode “Conversations With Dead People” won her a Hugo award in 2003. Her other credits include Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, Firefly (“Shindig”, one of my personal favorites), Angel, Tru Calling, and she is the co-creator of Warehouse 13. On top of that, she’s been tapped as one of the head writers of Torchwood: The New Earth.

I could fill this list with names of actresses on TV; much harder is finding someone with Jane Espenson’s pull and talent behind the scenes. She’s proved time and time again that if her name is attached, what you’re about to watch is a damn good story.

Danica McKellar

Who doesn’t remember The Wonder Years – and who didn’t want to be Winnie Cooper, the quintessential girl next door? Danica McKellar played Winnie for six seasons, earning Kevin Arnold’s heart – and ours.

More important is what she’s done since. Her transition from child to adult actress didn’t go as smoothly as she might have hoped, but her legacy will be something far more important than Winnie Cooper. She ended up majoring in mathematics at UCLA, even helping coauthor a brand-new theorem. After graduating, she started writing books specifically geared to closing the gender gap in mathematics. Among her books are “Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle-School Math without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail” and “Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who’s Boss”. Her books have hit the New York Times’ best-seller lists. And best of all, her attempts to break down the societal message that “girls don’t do math or science” seems to be working. The books are used all over the country.

Kari Byron

Kari Byron has, possibly, the best job in the world. She builds things on Mythbusters along with the rest of the cast, and then more often than not finds a way to blow it up spectacularly. Somewhere along the line, she delves into the science of the project at hand. Some of her cooler projects: building a hwacha, a 15th century Korean weapon that involves setting off 200 explosive arrows at once; also, she proved that climbing two stories down the side of a building using a rope made of human hair is possible. Also an artist, she specializes in sculpture that tackles social commentary.

Did I mention she gets to blow things up on a regular basis?

Evanna Lynch

This is a true fangirl. In 2006, a 14-year-old Evanna Lynch sat through an open casting call in London for the role of Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter movies. A huge Harry Potter fan, she cosplayed her way into the role, going into such detail that she made her own version of Luna’s radish earrings. In fact, her self-made earrings were so good that when she got the role, the head of costuming tossed out the earrings her department had been working on and had Lynch make more. After a grueling audition process, she beat out 15,000 other girls for the part – mostly due to her love of the books and of the character. Her performance as Luna was almost universally praised by critics and fans alike.

Imogen Heap

This amazing musician relies on technology to get her songs made, even rigging together contraptions to get exactly the sounds she wants. In one of her signature songs, “Hide and Seek”, she uses a vocoder in order to give herself acapella, synthesisized harmony in three (or more) parts. She’s trained herself on piano, guitar, cello, clarinet, and drums. And when that wasn’t enough, she taught herself sequencing, music engineering, and production on an old Atari.

There are many types of geek out there; computer, movie, music, and theatre are only some of them. Yet, if you catch Imogen Heap live (which I recommend that you do), you will see all of those in play. Beautiful, artistic and technologically complex, Imogen Heap’s music squarely lands her on this list.

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3. The Rise of the Fangirl: a Brief Rant