When Allison Stark pictures a geek in her mind, she said she sees a skinny guy wearing glasses and staring longingly at a beautiful girl, too shy to approach her.
Stark, a 21-year-old finance major, said this was the image she had in her mind as she filled out an application for the CW show "Beauty and the Geek" during the Saturday morning casting call on the Reitz Union Colonnade.
The reality show usually features beautiful female contestants and socially awkward male contestants who pair up for challenges to help improve the skills they lack - smarts for the women and social skills for the men.
The show's Web site stated the current season introduced a new pair featuring a "geeky" girl and an attractive male.
The teams compete for a grand prize of ,250,000.
Chuck Ellis, promotion director for the Gainesville CW station, said this is the first time a casting call for the show has been done in Gainesville.
Ellis said 29 people submitted applications during the four-hour casting call.
Applicants had to be 21 or older.
Other requirements included an application, two photographs of the applicant's head and body, and a 10-minute interview recorded by one of two video cameras set up on the colonnade.
Prospective beauties were asked questions such as who the vice president of the United States is and what they thought they could teach a geek.
Prospective geeks were asked for their best dance move and to show how large a 34B bust size is.
The applications and video logs were sent to casting directors in Los Angeles for review. Finalists chosen will be flown to Los Angeles for more interviews, Ellis said.
The season will be filmed summer 2008 and air the following fall.
Stark, who would like to be a high school teacher, said when she told her friends she might not make the show because she's too smart, they laughed.
"I'm not necessarily academically dumb, but I don't have much common sense," she said.
In addition to the grand prize, Stark said she hopes to be chosen so she can keep other contestants from missing out on opportunities in life just because they have poor social skills.
Stark added that the beauties on the show should learn to be themselves.
"If you're a smart, pretty girl, it's a much harder world for you," she said. "Men don't want to see smart girls because then they feel inferior. They don't want to marry a girl who's smarter than them."
