A typical girl next door is the girl you admired from afar and were afraid to approach, fearing that any erotic projection toward her would ruin her image as a decent, pure, and virginal womanly ideal. Aka Joey Potter from Dawson’s Creek. Joey was and still is the ultimate girl next door. I’m talking about season one, because once she hooks up with Dawson, no matter how un-hot their hook up and dating life was, it still takes her out of girl next door status and puts her into hussy next door. So let’s examine season one. She was strikingly beautiful, incredibly intelligent, and sassy to boot. She didn’t have to wear much (or any) make-up and she could do everything the boys could do and usually better. She had a wicked dark side because her mom died of cancer and her dad was in jail for drugs. She was cynical about the world and especially about love. She kept Dawson in his place constantly, particularly when he dove crazily in his various fantasy lives, whether they were about being a filmmaker or dating the sexy blonde neighbor from New York.
Yup, Joey was everyone’s heartthrob. She will always be my heartthrob.
The girl next door, while beautiful and tantalizing and fantastically sex in a super pure way, is and always will be a total fantasy. Because girls grow up into women and women have their own minds and they aren’t going to be those little pigtailed girls that you pushed in the mud because you liked them. They’re going to be crazy intelligent and able to kick your ass intellectually and physically. They’re going to grow up to be dominatrixes and into kink and sometimes they’re going to be a bit fatter than you’d like or grow their leg hair out or turn out to be Lesbians. They’re going to be feminists and will probably grow tired of you pigeon-holing them into some archetype or stereotype or some other type that she really isn’t. She’ll go to bars and grind with dudes and maybe get AIDS when she’s in her early thirties. Or maybe she’ll get knocked up at nineteen and take up smoking crack and end up having a crack baby.
The point is, you’ve got to let the girl next door grow up and figure out who she’s going to be and who she actually is. You’ve got to let go of the fantasy. Joey Potter was a TV character. Katie Holmes grew up and ended up marrying Tom Cruise, so what does that tell you? You just can’t ever tell how people are going to end up and what kind of retarded choices they might make over the course of their lives. And the number one rule always stands firm: one can never be a girl next door once one is a member of the ‘church’ of Scientology. Amen.
1. My dad married his girl next door. Then she transitioned into a dude.
2. That girl next door quality my daughter’s babysitter has really gives me a fat boner.
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