Brenda Kirk, who runs Geektress.-com, a website aimed at science fiction, fantasy and comic-book loving nerds, said one reason for the emergence of fangirls is that women are more open about their interests in these subjects.

The 30-year-old Ohio woman also credited the late 1990s TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" with awakening an interest in fantasy and science fiction among women and sending them to the Internet to feed that interest.

"The Internet opened things up, so that you don't have to go to some weird genre store somewhere. You can just have access to the stuff, 24/7," said Kirk, who began reading comics when she was 8. "The Comic-Con that I go to in New York, they have women panels all the time... because it's so mainstream now, it's not something you have to hide."

It really doesn't seem like that big of a deal for girls to be into these things, said Laura Galiffe, an illustrator, who lives in Somers Point.

Galiffe, 31, went to the anime convention in Baltimore, known as Otakon, for the first time in 1997, and has been attending annually since 2001 and has attended Wizard World in Philadelphia at least five times.