From ‘American Nerd’

The heroes of American popular culture are surfers, cowboys, pioneers, gangsters, cheerleaders, and baseball players, people at home in the heat of physical exertion. But so many of the individuals who make these images are more like Anne Beatts [whose experiences as a teenage nerd inspired her creation of the TV series Square Pegs]. Their voyeurism - their sense of staring from the wrong lunch table at a radiant nation - makes for a vision of America that appeals to the whole world, including A