Conservatively Girl Crushin'

[Photos courtesy of, L-R: JAMD.com and DavidCookWeb.com]
Also in my copy of the August 2008 Teen Vogue (don’t worry, I’ve recently canceled my subscription) is a completely useless article on girl crushes. It fails in trying to make lucid the difference between admiration and the possibility of the never-talked-about bisexuality or lesbianism, and generally makes a big to-do about nothing. There was a slightly more enlightening article on girl crushes a few years ago in The New York Times.

Teen Vogue quotes several victims of girl crushes, and as teens, they were expectedly ineloquent about their admiration. Ashlee is the best example of girl crushing gone wrong: When Ashlee split with her former friend, she found a new passion that her girl crush wasn’t into: literature. “She hated reading ... But books are my escape.” Yikes. Sounds like Ashlee has a few issues, but we’ll leave that to her therapist to work out.

The twenty- and thirty-somethings quoted in the New York Times article are slightly more comfortable and forthcoming with the details. Jane Weeks (actually in her forties) apparently was the object of many-a-woman’s affection – “At first, it’s flattering you’re inspiring them. When they parrot back parts of yourself, it’s extremely uncomfortable ... When you’re on a pedestal, there’s no way but down. And it’s lonely up there. You can’t share your weaknesses.” She, as of 2005, was “an outdoorswoman who has hiked through the Andes from Argentina to Chile” and believed that she represented “some National Geographic chick”. Hmm. Could it be that those who “girl crushed” on her mistook her for something else?

Teen Vogue cites Blake Lively, Natalie Portman, Ellen Page and model Agyness Deyn as the top celebs being crushed on. And now that Lindsay Lohan is with Samantha Ronson, SamRo has been thrust into the limelight in a whole new way – for both girls who like girls and girls who like boys. As Teen Vogue would say: Does she inspire you to want to learn to DJ? Girl crush. To stay calm in times of great strife? Girl crush. To want to cozy up to Lilo? No comment.

... and after thinking a little more deeply about this, the great waves of inspiration one David Archuleta has created with American Idol fans is very, very curious. For those who haven’t considered their admiration to be anything but a crush, fine. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the strange parasocial relationship I have with DArchuleta might just be a girl crush.