In 1974, Jim Stafford released the song My Girl, Bill which seemed to hint at a romantic relationship between two men. The first two verses reinforce this as Jim and Bill go inside to have some wine and discuss their relationship.
Let’s not stand out here like this.
What would the neighbors think?
Who we love, why we love,
It’s hard to understand.
Let’s just sit here on the couch
And face this man to man.
Both verses are followed by a cutesy chorus full of love for “my girl, Bill”. The twist comes in the third verse, which reveals that Jim and Bill are actually rivals for the affections of a woman.
You’re gonna have to find another,
'cause she’s my girl, Bill.
The listeners are left reassured that the two men are straight.
Would this song be allowed to play if it were released today? Attitudes have changed since the 1970s. Homosexuality was viewed as “wrong” and not normal. Today society has grown more tolerant, and even more welcoming to expressions of sexuality, other than heterosexuality. And this is a good thing. Does My Girl, Bill come across as homophobic, even though Stafford in real life probably isn’t, or is it just a harmless novelty song?
We’ll, it’s all so clever because you the listener think they are, you know,GAY, but they aren’t! Whew!
The song requires the stigma of being gay to “work”. If released now, it would be just a dumb song with no point, as opposed the the dumb song with a point it was when new.
I don’t know about you, but the gay men I know would almost certainly find it offensive (at the least) to depict their relationship as requiring one of them to be “the girl” and even addressed as such.
I myself, not being gay, would probably have assumed the “Bill” in question was an F2M transgender being addressed by a former husband or lover from her past, based on those lyrics quoted.
In the 70s ignorant people thought a gay couple needed one of the guys to be a “girl”. Of course it’s offensive to gay people, but then the song isn’t for them. it’s for SAHMs whose idea of risqué humor is Hollywood Squares, and this song. It’s for people that have never (to their knowledge) met a gay person in their lives.
In a similar vein, the early episodes of Soap (1977-81) were groundbreaking in having a gay character (“Jodie Dallas”, played by Billy Crystal), but also had a subplot about him preparing for sex-change surgery so he could be a “woman” for his closeted boyfriend (“Dennis Phillips”, played by Bob Seagren).
Further complicating the matter was Jodie having occasional romantic relationships with women, one of which produced a child, despite maintaining that he was gay.
Actually, I heard about a country song from 2014 that pulls the gender-reversed version of this same trick.
Allow me to introduce you to Girl Crush, by Little Big Town:
*I got a girl crush
Hate to admit it but
I got a heart rush
Ain’t slowing down
I got it real bad
Want everything she has
That smile and that midnight laugh
She’s giving you now
I want to taste her lips
Yeah, 'cause they taste like you
I want to drown myself
In a bottle of her perfume
I want her long blonde hair
I want her magic touch
Yeah, 'cause maybe then
You’d want me just as much
I got a girl crush
I got a girl crush*
Ha! You thought it was a song about* leeeeesbians*, but no, it was a straight song the whole time! Dun- dun- dunnnnnnn!
Genuine question; Do you think that we need to be sensitive to the LGBTQ community, but that denigrating Stay-At-Home-Moms (SAHMs) is okay? Your post suggests that this is what you believe.
For the record, I was never a SAHM, and am not especially comfortable with a parent of any gender dropping out of the workforce longterm in order to raise children. I think doing so raises both practical and ethical issues.
But people have the right to make that choice without getting knee-jerk judgment from people who don’t know their circumstances. There are plenty of SAHMs (and probably SAHDs too) who have a sophisticated sense of humor - I have known several of them.
D\I guess there’s something that will offend ever doper.
Nothing I said put down SAHMs. In the 70s, at least in my area of the country, SAHMs (such as my own!) didn’t, well, get out a lot. No internet! So their knowledge of the world was inherently limited. There were no openly or even marginally closeted gay folk around at all. No Black people, Chinese, Muslim, Jewish, just white Christians. So how would anyone get any knowledge of gay people? From watching Rock Hudson Doris Day movies? Liberace?
And as far as Paul Lynde, other than the “Everyone knew he was gay!” smarter-than-thou dopers, in the 70, most folks did not know he, Charles Nelson Riley, Liberace, Raymond Burr, Rock Hudson, Anthony Perkins etc etc etc were gay.
And risqué does not mean lame. look it up. Sheesh.
Unfortunately, this kind of casual homophobia was distressingly common. Even something like Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant”, which was practically a countercultural anthem, had lines like
“And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them”.
Having known the chorus but never the lyrics to the verses, I had absolutely no idea what the song actually meant / tricked us into thinking it meant. Mind, I haven’t heard or even thought of the song since I was about ten, and at the time I thought the joke was that his girlfriend’s name was “Bill”. Like maybe even though she goes by a boy’s nickname she’s a girl - his girl- through and through. This thread has truly been a :smack::smack::smack: for me.
As to the question at hand, no,it wouldn’t work today. Did gay men *ever *refer to their s/o as their “girl” Seems that’s a term strictly for homophobes.
Of course, even if I’d known the lyrics even back when the song came out, it still wouldn’t have made sense to me.
I’m with WOOKINPANUB, I remember hearing of the song and assuming Bill was just a woman’s name, like Frankie in “Frankie and Johnny.”
Nonsense. I’ll grant you Rock Hudson, Raymond Burr and Anthony Perkins, but everyone knew that Paul Lynde, Liberace, Charles Nelson Riley, and Rip Taylor were all gay. I grew up in small town Kansas and while no one would have publicly admitted they knew a gay person, gay entertainers in Hollywood were acknowledged to exist.
Seems that’s a term strictly for homophobes.