phrases, sayings, idioms and expressions at

???girl-next-door???

Posted by Bob on August 23, 2002

In Reply to: ???girl-next-door??? posted by masakim on August 22, 2002

: : : : anybody can help me out what this means...
: : : : me english no so good

: : : It means what it says. She is a metaphorical girl who lived in the next house(= next door) to a boy. This girl has come to symbolise the perfect woman of adult life.
: : : In real life, boys and girls who actually lived next to each other have rarely found perfection in the other!

: : Not perfection, at least in American usage. A "girl next door type" (in the Hollywood sense, and accepted by most Americans) is not glamorous, not exotic, not perfect, not remote, not worldly, not pretentious. She is "beautiful" in the sense of attainable, cheerful , direct, comfortable and sometimes underappreciated by the boy next door, who chases after some glamorous fantasy instead. She is, by generations, Ruby Keeler, not Joan Crawford; Myrna Loy, not Jane Russell; Doris Day, not Marilyn Monroe; Meg Ryan, not Cindy Crawford; Renee Zellweger, not (name any high-fashion model here.) The girl next door may have great cheekbones, but they've got freckles on them.

: the girl next door n phr by 1961 A sweet and ordinary young woman, in romance regarded as preferable to a talented, sophiscated, seductive woman
: From Dictionary of American Slang by Robert L. Chapman
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: Girl next door, The. A young woman, especially one known from childhood, regarded as a pleasant and decent but in the main conventional marriage partner.
: From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable by Adrian Room
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: Her appearance in _Playboy_ marked the beginning of the "girl-next-door" concept that separated _Playboy_ from the other glamour magazines of the time. (_The Times Magazine_, 27 Nov 1999)

Exactly. In the American mythology, high artifice is suspicious, and home-grown wholesomeness is (by gosh, if we'd only look!) infinitely preferable. There are a truckload of clichéd movie scripts to hammer the point home: why would Jimmy Stewart ever think of leaving Bedford Falls to travel the world, when there is dewy-eyed Donna Reed right there? Golly.

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