Talk:Girl next door

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Contents 1 Listing 2 Lists 3 categorization? 4 Sandra Dee 5 Creeping listification (again)

[edit] Listing

Do we really want this article to be mainly a long list? AnonMoos 00:18, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

No. Ideally, it'd have a short list — maybe 10 items — and then people could click "What links here" to see other relevant articles. The question is, which characters go on the short list? I think obviously Donna Pinciotti, Mary Jane Watson, Lana Lang, Ali Mills (The Karate Kid)... However, my biases include being American and knowing nothing about anime; I see a lot of anime characters on the current list, and I can't evaluate whether they really fit the stereotype (or even whether the stereotype means the same thing in Japan). --Quuxplusone 20:51, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, I see Rory Gilmore keeps getting added. I thought she was one of the protagonists of Gilmore Girls, and thus couldn't possibly be a "girl next door". Does GG have a male protagonist of whom I'm unaware? --Quuxplusone 20:51, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lists

I agree that lists of dozens could get unwieldy, but splitting it into sections alleviates that somewhat. Also, girls like Sabrina Fairchild (Who was actually the first girl categorized as a girl next door in a movie trailor) and Kiki Harrison & Chloe Sullivan who very recently were advertised that way belong on the list —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.66.61.154 (talk • contribs)

Lists of dozens are precisely what we don't want! Remember that this is not a list of all the "girls next door" in fiction anywhere. This is an article about the meaning and cultural context of the phrase, which happens to contain a short (short) list of notable examples for the benefit of the reader. Special:Whatlinkshere/Girl next door is one place to go to see a longer list.

There's no reason to split the list up by medium (which means "movies", "TV", "books", and so on), because the medium has nothing to do with the defining characteristics of the stereotype. If the list is getting too long, cut it down.

I'll cut the list back down to size when I get around to it. Your point about Sabrina, if it can be verified, is a good point. I don't buy the rationale for America's Sweethearts — I don't think it was a very popular movie, or notable for any other reason either, so it doesn't help the reader to understand the meaning of the term "girl next door". --Quuxplusone 16:22, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] categorization?

As a solution to the problem of lists, we could create a sub-category under the main category of stock characters[1]. If the girl in question is notable enough on WP to have her own article, it would be linked through the categories. I think this would solve the problem of who's notable enough to list and who's not. The sub-category itself should survive a CfD if it's reasonably populated. As an example, the stock characters category has a sub-category for jesters[2] which links the articles of individual jester characters like Rigoletto or Puck. Wl219 05:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sandra Dee

Isn't Sandra Dee, who appeared in the film "Gidget", the archetypal "girl next door" ?--87.243.196.167 10:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

No. (Gidget is a protagonist; she's not "next door" to anyone; she's a tomboy.) --Quuxplusone 23:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

The girl next door is a girl that you would "Take home to mom". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.215.140.23 (talk) 22:48, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Creeping listification (again)

The lists need to be periodically purged, but unfortunately, I'm not the best-qualified person to carry out this task (or I would do it myself)... AnonMoos (talk) 01:17, 7 April 2008 (UTC)