Nerds Can Be Predators Too: How Kid Shows Portray Sexual Harassment
This summer, fueled by a need for cash and something to do in the aftermath of summer job and internship cancellations, I turned to babysitting for a local family. Although they’re not technically allowed more than thirty minutes of screen time per day, around hour ten I usually begin to buckle under the weight of their constant pleas to watch something on TV. Plus, they always end up hiding the remote.
As a result, I’ve seen – or suffered through – a lot of post-2007 Disney Channel. Although I’ve tried countless times to convince the kids to choose That’s So Raven, they’d much rather watch a Jesse spinoff about racially stereotyped rich kids forced by their absent parents to attend a summer camp in Maine with unrealistically large cabins. At least there’s no simpering Debby Ryan character written into the script.
As I have slowly become more and more well-versed in the current lineup of Disney shows, I’ve noticed a pattern: the trope of the nerd who harrasses women. It’s almost always a man, and he’s usually small with a thin frame, some variation of glasses that are too big for his face, and hair that is either outdated or untamed. I’ll throw out some well-known examples here: Sinjin from Victorious and Freddie Benson from iCarly. Both of these characters make advances towards women despite being told no multiple times and spy on women that they’re interested in. In Sinjin’s case, his entire personality consists of his role as a techie and the lecherous comments he makes towards female characters. A character from a show outside of the Disney monolith that exactly fits this description is Jacob Ben Israel in Glee. For you fringe gleeks or people that don’t mess with musical comedies, he’s a minor character whose primary traits are filling Jewish stereotypes and making Rachel Berry uncomfortable. In season one, he threatens to expose her secrets unless she gives him a pair of her worn panties.
Despite all of this, Jacob is presented as a relatively small threat. He receives laughs instead of consequences for his actions and maintains the role as the harmless nerd who provides comic relief, acting as a foil for the bigger, more traditionally masculine football players who are typically successful in their sexual endeavors. Jacob’s body is not perceived as sexually threatening, so actions carried out by that body aren’t either.
When I was watching the Disney channel with my charges – who are six and eight years old – the show that caught my attention was My Babysitter’s a Vampire. To those who are unfamiliar with the series – which I hope is most of you – the basic concept is this: a teenage boy isn’t responsible enough to take care of his younger sister, so his mom hires a babysitter for the both of them. So embarrassing, right? Except the babysitter is hot! And a vampire! Antics ensue!
My problem isn’t really with the dynamic between the main character, Ethan, and the babysitter, although I do think it’s worthwhile to examine the “crush on the babysitter” archetype as young boys seeking to conquer women who have power over them. My problem is with a minor character named Rory.
Rory is kind of a sidekick once removed from the main character; he’s granted little screen time. But, even among the PG-rated monster killings and bad acting, he stood out to me. He constantly objectifies female characters, referring to them almost exclusively as “hot babes.” In one scene in the series’ official movie, Rory takes a picture of a fellow student dancing at a party and sends it to Ethan, using her image to urge him to come to the party. All of this is done without the woman’s consent. As I watched this play out, I thought about the time in my high school photography class that some male students thought it would be funny to take pictures of my rear end with the film cameras.
Then, I thought about the kids I take care of. The little boy is six. We’re still working on appropriate and consensual touching. The little girl is eight, and I don’t want her to feel like it’s okay for people to take pictures of her body without her consent.
This isn’t an isolated phenomenon within the Disney roster, nor one that applies only to male-presenting characters. Hazel from Bunk’d – the aforementioned show about rich kids – is an example of a female who is written in a similar way. Although she doesn’t fit the techie stereotype of the typical sexually aggressive nerd character, she fits a different one: the freak. She wears oversized button down shirts with suspenders, spiky pigtails on either side of her head, and tries to control everybody around her. In one episode, she uses her position as head counselor to body search a counselor that she has a crush on for contraband.This joke – underlined by off-camera shouts from the other counselor such as “Hazel! That’s not a pocket!”– constitutes most of Hazel’s involvement in that episode.
These observations also extend into television shows made for adults: Howard from The Big Bang Theory and Missy from Big Mouth to name a few. However hypersexualized the nerd characters become, they are never presented as threats.
At the same time that they trivialize nerd-perpetrated sexual violence, these characters set up a dichotomy between themselves and the characters that are written to be more appealing. The football players in Glee, Ethan in My Babysitter’s a Vampire (who is one of those characters who is not supposed to be cute but who is played by a conventionally attractive actor), Peyton List’s character in Bunk’d, are never seen on screen engaging in sexual harassment. Maybe this is because it would be scarier for kids to see a “normal” person being creepy than the nerd/freak character trope, who they expect to be creepy, doing the same thing. By pigeonholing sexual harassment into something that’s only perpetrating by specific types of people and simultaneously dismissing sexual harassment from that group, these shows tidy away the whole topic without actually having to broach it.
The way that these characters are written teaches young children three things: sexual harassment should only be taken seriously when it comes from certain bodies, respecting the consent of others isn’t necessary, and not everybody has to respect their bodily autonomy. And they reach thousands of kids who are just beginning to figure out the world and how to exist in it. According to Business Insider, Disney+ surpassed fifty million subscribers only five months after launching, and I’m sure the number has only gone up.
Weirdos and nerds can still be predators, even if they aren’t seen as sexually threatening. Skinny, small people can still be predators, even if they aren’t seen as physically threatening. Abuse can come from all types of people, and teaching kids otherwise could prevent them from recognizing harassment when it inevitably makes an appearance in their lives. I’m not saying that we should spend all of our time policing children’s shows, but pointing out where the characters go wrong could be a start.