On the subject of Andrew Garfield's spidey being a handsome, stylish, good-looking normal guy, as opposed to an oppressed nerd, I'd like to at least offer the comparison that the original Peter Parker was by no means an ugly guy. He was always drawn to be a relatively clean-cut, normal looking, if overly bookish, average teen. He was never the pock-marked, fashion-challenged, buck-toothed caricature of a nerd that everyone seems to think he was, and in the past few decades, he hasn't been. In many incarnations, Peter has had his shit together for a long, long time, and the notion of him being a down-trodden geek who still gets stuffed into lockers is just anachronistic.
I think, for the same reason, they made Garfield's Spidey a more modern and average guy, instead of some out of place cliche of a nerd who tapes his thick rimmed glasses together, wears sweater-vests, and stays up all night working on his science project for the state fair, or something. So they made him a socially awkward loner who has trouble talking to girls and likes to do his own thing in private, which is pretty much what any sort of modern nerd could be considered.