Last night, as they usually do, the teens at All Saints’ Wednesday night youth group taught me something new.
We had 21 rambunctious ones, wired on sugar (we had had brownies), hormones, schoolwork and Advent exhaustion. We always begin by going around the room, having each teen introduce himself or herself, usually with an answer to a silly question thrown in. Since our church’s main youth pastor is expecting, we asked the kids to throw out name suggestions. The suggestions ranged from the traditional (John, Susan) to the once-again trendy (Micah, Jacob) to the wince-inducing (Travis — for a girl, Paris — for Hilton). But one fellow, whom I’ll call Mike, said he liked the name Josh, as that is the name of our group’s sturdiest and most likeable "alpha male." Here is the exchange:
Mike: "If you have a son, name him Josh. Josh is the best name for a boy."
Josh: "Dude, that’s so cool. I’ve got such a boy-crush on you right now!"
Mike: "Right on."
And I, who thought he had "heard it all", learned of the "boy-crush" last night. Josh and Mike aren’t gay. (One can’t always know for certain the complexities of teenage sexuality, but I’ve worked with these two for years — trust me, they’re flamingly hetero.) But even as they laughed about the term "boy-crush", they made it clear that at least within their circle of friends, straight guys are using that term regularly.
Het adolescent girls often get crushes on each other which they make public knowledge. (For that matter, some adult women I know admit to the same thing.) These crushes rarely seem to involve sexual attraction — they seem to be more about intense admiration and genuine affection than anything else. I’ve heard the term "girl crush" used quite a bit in recent years, but I never thought I’d hear "boy crush" used except in jest. A couple of the boys assured me that it was still used rarely, but was gaining currency.
When Josh used the term last night, there was some laughter and some grinning, but it was clear that this was not just another example of a young alpha male pretending to be effeminate. (You know, the sort of impulse that leads the captain of the high school football team to put on a girl’s cheerleading outfit and squeal — the message is "I"m so unassailably masculine that only I can get away with this.") Though the young men I know at All Saints still struggle with a cultural message that calls them to rigid masculinity, I can see that many of them are, in some small but significant ways, living far more comfortably in their own skin than my generation of fellas did. It’s heartening.
To those who are hipper than I — is there some sort of pop-culture origin of the term "boy crush" that I’ve missed? Or "girl crush"? It sounds like the sort of thing that might have started on "Seinfeld" (a show I can say I watched once and then cheerfully ignored), or "Friends" (which I didn’t watch more often.)
All I know is, I’m going to start using the term boy-crush. Watch out, guys.
I just finished a chick-lit book by Marian Keyes in which one female character referred to her “girl-crush” on another character. The author is Irish – maybe it’s a term that has just come stateside? I’m thinking I’ve seen it elsewhere, but this is the only specific spot I’ve seen it in the recent past.
Hmm, I wonder if that’s gaining any currency outside of highly progressive and tolerant communities. Anyway, regardless this post put a big smile on my face. I can’t help but interpret this as a sign of progress, albeit a small one. I saw hetero men joke around about crushes on other men in my highly liberal college, but that’s a world apart from high school.
For the record, though both “Josh” and “Mike” are the sons of very liberal, very active All Saints Pasadena parents, they are both in public schools. Josh is African-American to boot.
I’ve heard this on the jobsite from the younger guys, but I interpreted it as a “I’m so masculine I can get away with it” type of thing…like goosing or ass-patting.
That’s what I thought initially too — but while that may be a playful part of it, it isn’t the whole thing. (At least not with these boys.) Besides, that alpha male appropriation of feminine behavior is usually hiding some real desire to connect with other guys.
The concept is ancient: deep affection and admiration between men (or between women) is as old as… well you can start with Gilgamesh, and work your way forward (or back, but I can’t think of an older example just now). It’s nice to know that the concept isn’t lost in today’s culture. The phrasing of it bothers me, not because of the sublimated sexuality of the “crush” but because of the trivialized nature of the term.
It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for the term crush to become entirely sublimated, sexually, but then we’ll have to come up with another term for … wait, we have one already: infatuation. Though that carries a sense of shallowness, which isn’t always justified….
I gotta stop thinking out loud in print. Sorry.
On a related note, I know a guy who’s used the term “academic crush” to describe his admiration for a particular professor (also male). I thought he just made that up as a joke – he was pretty clearly looking for a laugh when he said it, and in any case he’s definitely hetero – but I wonder if others have heard the term?
Well, I haven’t heard the term, but I have certainly experienced it! I had some whoppingly powerful academic crushes on some of my mentors, even in grad school. I just was so damn hungry for their approval…
I refer to men and women I admire as My Other Boy/Girlfriend.
I have heard “boy-crush” before, but only by punk rock kids desperate to be subversive.
I’ve heard, though I haven’t experienced it directly because I don’t have contact with kids that age, that young men these days are more secure with gay men, since they’ve grown up with out friends and out parents of friends and out relatives. To the extent that if they find out that a gay friend has a crush on them, they’ll be flattered rather than threatened, at least in some cases (there are of course some horrible exceptions).
I’ve definitely used girl-crush to describe certain celebrities and quasi-celebrities, such as Serena Williams, Salma Hayek, and Investigator Debbie MacDonald of the Michigan Humane Society, on “Animal Cops: Detroit.”
Being bi, I’ve always used the terms “boy-crush” or “girl-crush” simply because it makes it easier to anonymously refer to someone I’ve got my eye on whilst informing people of their gender. I’ve never heard any of my male peers use “boy-crush” sadly, but we all regularly use “brain-crush” to describe someone we have an intellectual admiration for (mostly teachers) and “blog-crush”.
Oh, I like “blog crush” too! That’s very good.
Jonathan, I do think the way it was being used by my kids was fairly superficially — as a way of saying “wow, dude, I really like you” rather than “you are my brother, and I want to go into battle at your side.”
The DJs on the morning radio show here occasionally talk about having “man-crushes”, which cracked me up. They are all straight, in morning DJ style, but one of them one morning said without any hesistation whatsoever that he has a huge man-crush on Carson Kreely, the fashion guy on “Queer Eye”. So, it may be a growing term and it’s free enough of sexual implications that at least one straight man announced having this feeling towards a gay man on the radio.
It needs to be a common term and now. Men need a better way to describe the affection they have between them.
you guys need to grow up.
saying things like that doesn’t mean “admitting affection” or whatever.
it’s a goddamn joke.
somebody emailme and give me some tips on your period and crushes on boys
Queer liberal scum
I’ll refer back to Hugo’s comment when he talked about male-male affection in Gilgamesh. You can also find examples of this kind of brotherly love (philos) in the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as in the Pentatuch and the New Testament. Love between two males can exist without a sexual realationship, which would make it a homosexual atraction.
Unfortunately, our culture doesn’t seem mature enough to recognize male-male affection as just that, and instead demeans these people as “sissys”, “fags” whatever. This is really hurtful, especially to a youngster who is just trying to figure things out himself.