Chris71 wrote:
The reason for that reaction from those girls would most likely be one of two things ( or combination of both ):
- You yourself are probably aware that the study of dinosaurs can be a science, studied by many adult and highly mature academic people. However, the ubiquitious masses of people out there, who get their kicks from reality TV shows and herd mentality, have no attention span for such academic areas of interest so their only knowledge of dinosaurs are through toy representations that younger kids generally play with, with some limited knowledge that they were some kind of species that existed long ago. In other words, because of their lack of academic maturity, they assume that the study of (or interest in) dinosaurs is typically associated with 5-year old boys.
- The trigger for their comment ("oh hey do you like dinosaurs?"); presumably a comment with humorus and slightly derogatory intentions, could be because their perception of your appearance.
If you appear visually to them as a nerd, then they will talk to you like one. Why?... Their own experience of nerds are they appear as the awkward ones in groups, with no care for fashion or clothes style, hair styles, appearance, that most 'herd mentality' people care about. They certainly don't want to have a quirky/awkward person (in their perception) associated with their own girly group. In other words, they sometimes find it necessary to say something derogatory to a nerd-lookalike in order to distance their girly group from anything that isn't 'cool' (in their interpretation) ; "that guy is *so* not like us, so we want to reinforce a sense of distance between the nerd and our girly group".
Very well said! I don't think it could have been explained any better.