Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Girl Crush- Like a Real Crush, but Not
Ms. Buice, who lives with her boyfriend, calls her attraction a girl crush, a phrase that many women in their 20's and 30's use in conversation, post on blogs and read in magazines. It refers to that fervent infatuation that one heterosexual woman develops for another woman who may seem impossibly sophisticated, gifted, beautiful or accomplished. And while a girl crush is, by its informal definition, not sexual in nature, the feelings that it triggers - excitement, nervousness, a sense of novelty - are very much like those that accompany a new romance.
This is not a new phenomenon. Women, especially young women, have always had such feelings of adoration for each other. Social scientists suspect such emotions are part of women's nature, feelings that evolution may have favored because they helped women bond with one another and work cooperatively. What's new is the current generation's willingness to express their ardor frankly.
"Historically, talking about these kinds of feelings has gone in and out of fashion," said Paula J. Caplan, a sociologist who this fall will teach a course about the psychology of sex and gender at Harvard. Women have not been this blunt in expressing their crushes for several generations, Dr. Caplan said.
I'm a little skeptical here...
Shrine of the Holy Whapping backs me up on this one:
The girl crush disconnects the apparatus of romance from sexual, and particularly heterosexual love and marriage. We already have split childbirth from sex and sex from marriage; shearing off romance from love or even lust is, I suppose, the next step. The great emotions of Man are now taken to bits like the parts of an enormous clock, and Ms. Buice can feel free to take whatever the shiniest, prettiest ones she wants to. The problem is, you can't tell the time with two springs and a nice brass gear.
I would even argue that the theory of the girl crush tries to disconnect the apparatus of romance from sexual, but fails. Flutters and sighs, though superficial at times, is sexual. One can't just separate them out for convenience's sake and then put them back together when you want. In short, I think this thing is a little homosuspicious. Does that mean the end of the world? No, because same sex attraction, or even heterosexual attraction is not the defining factor in one's identity.
Jason Evert mentioned in an interview on The Abundant Life that a reporter was interviewing Bl. Teresa of Calcutta who was asking her about her thoughts on homosexuals. She corrected him and told him to call them, "the friends of Jesus." The reporter had difficulty continuing the line of questions. Why? Because we as a society place such an emphasis on homosexuals' sexual identity that it becomes their ownly defining quality.
Matt from SHW explains this idea quite well:
Gay activists define themselves by their sexual relationships, a fact which puzzles straight folk like myself; my attraction to women is just part of a much larger personal constellation. But considering that the connubial embrace between husband and wife images the Trinity, the sexuality of a Catholic does loom rather large in his or her life; and the opposite extreme, which seeks to deconstruct the settled order of the two becoming one flesh, is yet another quietly disturbing trend in the continued collapse of Western Society. There is something far better than a girl crush: the deep, true friendship of women with women, and the deeper mystagogies of marriage that take man and woman out of themselves and create in them something startling and new that is as old as the world itself.
This is not a new phenomenon. Women, especially young women, have always had such feelings of adoration for each other. Social scientists suspect such emotions are part of women's nature, feelings that evolution may have favored because they helped women bond with one another and work cooperatively. What's new is the current generation's willingness to express their ardor frankly.
"Historically, talking about these kinds of feelings has gone in and out of fashion," said Paula J. Caplan, a sociologist who this fall will teach a course about the psychology of sex and gender at Harvard. Women have not been this blunt in expressing their crushes for several generations, Dr. Caplan said.
I'm a little skeptical here...
Shrine of the Holy Whapping backs me up on this one:
The girl crush disconnects the apparatus of romance from sexual, and particularly heterosexual love and marriage. We already have split childbirth from sex and sex from marriage; shearing off romance from love or even lust is, I suppose, the next step. The great emotions of Man are now taken to bits like the parts of an enormous clock, and Ms. Buice can feel free to take whatever the shiniest, prettiest ones she wants to. The problem is, you can't tell the time with two springs and a nice brass gear.
I would even argue that the theory of the girl crush tries to disconnect the apparatus of romance from sexual, but fails. Flutters and sighs, though superficial at times, is sexual. One can't just separate them out for convenience's sake and then put them back together when you want. In short, I think this thing is a little homosuspicious. Does that mean the end of the world? No, because same sex attraction, or even heterosexual attraction is not the defining factor in one's identity.
Jason Evert mentioned in an interview on The Abundant Life that a reporter was interviewing Bl. Teresa of Calcutta who was asking her about her thoughts on homosexuals. She corrected him and told him to call them, "the friends of Jesus." The reporter had difficulty continuing the line of questions. Why? Because we as a society place such an emphasis on homosexuals' sexual identity that it becomes their ownly defining quality.
Matt from SHW explains this idea quite well:
Gay activists define themselves by their sexual relationships, a fact which puzzles straight folk like myself; my attraction to women is just part of a much larger personal constellation. But considering that the connubial embrace between husband and wife images the Trinity, the sexuality of a Catholic does loom rather large in his or her life; and the opposite extreme, which seeks to deconstruct the settled order of the two becoming one flesh, is yet another quietly disturbing trend in the continued collapse of Western Society. There is something far better than a girl crush: the deep, true friendship of women with women, and the deeper mystagogies of marriage that take man and woman out of themselves and create in them something startling and new that is as old as the world itself.
