Good 'splanation

Posted by R ricardo on August 26, 2002

In Reply to: ???girl-next-door??? posted by Bob 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 galmorous 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.