Life on the Internet is rough for some girls and women. There's just nothing that suits them no matter where they look. Content is either blatantly oriented toward men or far too pink, shallow and girly — there's no happy medium.
Now a site called The Mary Sue is trying to change that.
TechCrunch reports that the folks behind news portal Mediaite are launching The Mary Sue in an attempt to succeed where many others have failed: In creating a comfortable Internet destination for geek girls.
The site proclaims itself to be a "guide to girl geek culture" and wants geek girls and/or women everywhere to know that its staff understands them completely:
The Mary Sue is here to say one thing, and one thing emphatically: skeptical geek women, we know where you are coming from.
We know the point at which you would be satisfied is to just be able to geek out with all geeks, of any gender, without feeling like your femininity is front and center for scrutiny. To not feel like you have to work harder than guys to prove that you’re genuinely into geek culture. We want simple things, like to be able to visit a comic book store without feeling out of place. To be able to buy a video game without getting the sense that the cashier thinks we’re buying it for someone else.
But mainly we just want to be able to pursue our hobbies with the other people who share them. We want to play with the boys.
So far The Mary Sue has posts such as a no-frills wrap-up of the Academy Awards, a gallery of token tomboy characters, an explainer on why there are so few women in science mixed among cute cat videos and posts declaring some Harry Potter themed pillows to be adorable. Overall the site feels like it's struggling to nail down an age segment to focus on.
We're not sure if geek girls of any age will truly find a home with The Mary Sue or if they will quickly retreat to the familiar comfort of more male-oriented sites, but we're certainly glad that attempts are being made to understand — and cater to — them.
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Rosa Golijan writes about tech for boys AND girls. She may be obsessed with Twitter, but still loves to be liked on Facebook.