Girlie crushes

Ever been amazed at the way that you connect with a girlfriend? You may be experiencing a girlie crush. We investigate what it means when admiration and attraction go hand in hand

By Fran Walker

I made a new friend recently. I knew her from waiting outside my daughter's classroom, and was delighted to discover that we lived in the same road. However it was when we got chatting, and I realised we both had the same dirty sense of humour, that the friendship really took off.

When I got to school, I would find myself seeking her out to talk to, and being disappointed if she wasn't there. If I drove past her, I would park up and walk with her. It was only on a Christmas night out with other mums, during a drunken conversation in the toilet, that we both confessed we felt the same. It got me thinking about how, when women forge a new friendship, for a short time it can feel like falling in love.

No sex please, we're girlies
We are not talking pre-Brad Angelina Jolie stuff here. I've never been sexually attracted to a woman. But Dr Helen Fisher's book, 'Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love,' states that girlie crushes are as natural as any other kind of love. However, since love and lust are distinct urges, these are (nearly always) not sexual attractions (sorry lads).

This isn't the first time I've had a girlie crush, and I am by no means unusual (honest). During my teenage years I was a conventional, upright kind of girl who loved reading. This caught the attention of the school rebel, who took me under her wing. We'd sit in her attic bedroom, smoke, read poetry and listen to Joni Mitchell. This fevered friendship never made it into a lifelong commitment, but often they do.

Like me, most teenage girls experience some kind of crush on another female, and so do many women. Many women actually put the other female on a pedestal for what they believe is a superior quality - looks, brains, popularity or, in the case of my own first crush, coolness. This can easily occur in adulthood too.

Adult crushes
The New York Times quotes the example of Tammea Tyler, a successful 28-year old who had a crush on a 48-year old colleague:

'Ms. Tyler said she admires Ms. Zimmer's intellect and her inner strength. 'She really knows her stuff, and there's something almost sexy about that,' Ms. Tyler said. 'There's just something really sexy and powerful.''

I have had several experiences when I have met a woman on a night out who has been a friend of a friend, and we have 'just clicked'. Geographical distance has meant that this never went further, but I have remembered how attracted I was to this person's personality to this day. If you asked me to remember any of the blokes I've drunkenly flirted with over the years and it would be a different story.

Many women actually put the other female on a pedestal for what they believe is a superior quality - looks, brains, popularity or, in the case of my own first crush, coolness

So much for progress
So what do these girlie crushes mean? In spite of so-called liberation, they seem to have gone out of fashion - or at least, we don't talk about them anymore. Many women are no longer comfortable admitting they have strong feelings for another female. Perhaps it would be easier if they realised these are very primitive emotions. Research by social scientists suggests female bonding is part of the female make-up. In the days when the men were off catching the dinner it was important for the women to co-operate with each other. Many tribes operate in the same way today.

When Louisa May Allcott was writing Little Women in the 19th century, and well into the 20th century, female crushes were still the norm. By the 1960s, homophobia was in full swing and these crushes were, well, crushed. By the 1990s, films like Single White Female and Basic Instinct were displaying obsessive and murderous girl crushes. So what about the 21st century girl crush?

From crush to friendship
Tilda Swinton recently revealed that her first crush was for a woman. Swinton says, 'She was very glamorous, but in a completely unconscious way. I was about 12: It was a super girl crush. And I suppose around the same time I was falling heavily in love with Mr David Bowie.'

There you have it. Us girls have more than enough love to give friends and lovers. Hopefully the more tolerant noughties will see another turnaround in the frank expression of female affection. Girlie crushes are not always reciprocated, but they are still more likely to flower into a friendship than the average ordinary crush will become a romance. My own has become a very enjoyable friendship. Long live the girlie crush!