In Which We Make Them Smile From White Castle To The Nile

Girl Crushes: The Pink Rhombus

by Tess Lynch

I guess Suicide Girls are sort of great girl crushes; they do give you interesting ideas of how to wear eyeliner.

A lot of yammering has gone on in the past about girl crushes, like what part of the brain starts shooting electrodes when you have one, and how to deal with a girl crush breakup. This may be kind of a stretch because, hey! It’s a brain crush, not a bone crush; it’s sweeter, and you don’t even have to get to know the person, and then find out that you actually hate them. To me, the qualities I look for in a girl crush are:

1. Does she look better than I look when she wakes up in the morning? The answer to this question is almost always yes.

2. Does she look like she has more fun than I’ve ever had, listens to better music I’ve never heard of, eats fattening food but always stops when she’s full, and knows of secret cosmetics from off-brand companies located somewhere crazy that she buys for cheap?

3. Does she have extensive knowledge of something I find incredibly boring but wish I cared about? Examples: Russian literature, how to make Hollandaise sauce, sculpture, Vespas, and Charlie Chaplin movies.

Girlcrushin.

With the advent of Facebook and Myspace, I think girl crushing has become even more common. Sometimes you’ll go to someone’s page and they’re looking awesome: because their picture is actually Shannyn Shmoshmamon. I don’t hate. They want to be like Shannyn Shmoshmamon, and that is because Shannyn is apparently a DJ, from Hawaii, a dancer, and looks better than they do when they wake up in the morning.

The Delia*s catalog is like Girl Crush 101 for the tweenagers.

“Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex” — CSS (mp3)

I first learned to girl crush when I was an adolescent and realized that the girls in the Delia*s catalog were actually my age, wearing the clothes I probably had under a wet towel on my floor. My taste was not refined. I was pretty impressed just that they could actually make facial expressions in front of a camera. Every girl crush has a jumping-off point: for some, this might be ranking the girls of 90210. And that’s okay too.

Some of my favorite classy dames:

Tuesday Weld, just having a good time.

“Heartbeats” — The Knife (mp3)

Tuesday Weld is a girl crush because she “didn’t have to play Lolita, [she] was Lolita;” that is already a great reason, but there are more. Sam Shepard called her “the female Marlon Brando,” she never wanted to be a huge star and turned down stuff like, oh, you know, Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde, and she was a dark free-wheeler. Free-wheeling is what she is doing in the photo above.

Sophia Loren: girl crush who eats spaghetti.

“Ladyflash” — The Go! Team (mp3)

The New Zealand Herald backhands one of my personal favorite girl-crushes by calling her both old and in possession of a hot body; it’s like, duh, everybody knows Sophia’s got a banging body, you don’t have to call her old. She looks like she spends equal parts of her time giggling, sipping wine, looking fabulous in clothes, watching great movies and eating fattening food. In the morning, that lady is still waking up looking really tremendous.

Brigitte, the world’s most obvious girl crush

“TKO” — Le Tigre (mp3)

When you discover that Brigitte Bardot exists, and up until the point where you listen to her music, you are madly in love with her. You, I don’t care if you’re a girl or a boy, YOU ARE in love with Brigitte. Unless you’ve heard her music, you can ignore the PETA-like vibe and embrace her as she makes Contempt watchable and shows up on absolutely everyone’s social networking pages.

FD and TL: both anti-bra

“I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” — Scissor Sisters (mp3)

Faye Dunaway might be my favorite girl crush. She has like four things in production on her IMDB, which also hits you with these gems: she is for some reason nicknamed “Miss Faye,” she was married to the dude from J. Geils Band, and she has an Oscar. Because she knows she’s a badass, I will forgive her for pulling an Alec Baldwin.

Anne Bancroft: woman, you’ll be a girl crush soon.

“Take Another Little Piece of My Heart” — Janis Joplin (mp3)

Anne Bancroft: Method actor, which means that she had the capacity to work hard, which I lack; she got an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony; and, something which until three seconds ago was news to me, she wrote and directed a movie called Fatso with Dom Deluise. Oh yeah, and she was married to Mel Brooks, which automatically means she was hilarious and a genius.

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What I Imagine It Takes To Be A Girl Crush:

1. Have a clean bathroom filled with Kiehl’s products.

2. Own adorable shoes, have ability to keep them out of puddles/melting sod: we who see, Irregular Choice, London Sole

3. Go to Russia, go to Russian school

4. When you jet-set, take Virgin America, because as my dad pointed out recently, they are F’ing Southwest in the A. Then you too will be cute when you wake up, even if it’s just on planes, and it will cost you about $260 roundtrip from and back from (uh, this is the one down side) Los Angeles, NYC, Las Vegas, San Diego, San Francisco, and DC .

5. Learn how to knit and purl. The purling part I find impossible.

6. Trade in your car for a Vespa + extra life insurance.