By Arturo R. García
Lost in the morass of morons who decided to pop up after Nina Davuluri was crowned Miss America on Sunday was … well, just about everything else about her.
But as Lakshmi Gandhi pointed out at The Aerogram, Davuluri is a nerd in both the academic and pop-cultural sense: she’s holds a degree in Brain Behavior and Cognitive Science and plans to apply to medical school. She is also a self-identified Star Wars and Star Trek fan.
The New York Times‘ Jeff Yang added to this on Sett, both citing Gandhi’s post and posting a shot of Davuluri in full cosplay:
New Miss America and “Star Wars” fan Nina Davuluri. Image via Jeff Yang.
Update: Many eagle-eyed readers tipped us off to this, and Geekquality confirmed that the photo is indeed photoshopped. But her statements about her fandom are still on the record.
Yang also notes that runner-up Crystal Lee’s platform was based around women in technology and was an intern at Dropbox as well as a Stanford graduate. She is also working with a start-up company developing a transportation method for vaccines that doesn’t require refrigeration. While the function and message sent by beauty pageants in and of themselves is worth discussion, it’s at least encouraging that this year’s top two finishers are not only women of color, but involved in STEM fields.
Which makes it especially egregious to find that the geek Internet at large seems to be ignoring Davuluri’s win. Searches under “Miss America geek” and “Nina Davuluri geek” come up scarce.
It’s only been a few days since Davuluri’s win, so we’ll be keeping an eye out to see if interest in her fandom picks up as the tempest regarding the racist attacks against her subsides. But let’s just say this silence is … curious, to say the least.