Gal Pals
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About
Gal Pals and Live-in Gal Pals are jokes popular in the LGBTQ community made to mock heteronormative media's erasure of bisexuality among women.
Origin
The trend of people suggesting lesbians were simply "girlfriends" or "gal pals" has long been prevalent. On July 3rd, 2014, Tumblr user getsby[5] posted a compilation of headlines that suggested two celebrity women engaging in homosexual activity were simply good friends (shown below).
Spread
The trend began getting more regularly spoofed later in the year. On November 3rd, 2014, Tumblr user stevebucki posted a joke about the media's erasure of lesbian relationship that gained over 36,000 notes (shown below).
In January of 2015, a Tumblr devoted to sending up the trend called justgalpalthings[4] launched. A parody of relatable-style blogs, justgalpalthings posted images of ladies with highly romantic captions, but titled them "just gal pal things" (ex: shown below).
Live-In Gal Pals
The phrase "live-in gal pal" came from a series of Daily Mail[1][2] articles from early 2015 that described Alicia Cargile as actress Kristen Stewart's "live-in gal pal" while running photos of the two holding hands and behaving romantically (example shown below).
The articles' hesitance to suggest that the relationship between Cargile and Stewart was more than platonic generated criticism and mockery for the way the media covers bisexual celebrities and homosexual relationships. On April 21st of that year, Pajiba.com[3] ran an article with screenshots of media outlets' hesitancy to claim that Cargile and Stewart could be dating despite running articles about them "snuggling" and "touching chests in familiar ways."
On July 26th, 2015, Tumblr's memearchives[6] documented the meme, noting that perhaps the media's insistence on calling lesbians "gal pals" was a way to invade celebrities' privacy but avoid potential slander lawsuits.
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1] Daily Mail – Kristen Stewart gets touchy-feely with her live-in gal pal Alicia Cargile as they celebrate star's 25th birthday at Coachella
[2] Daily Mail – Dressed down Kristen Stewart and gal pal Alicia Cargile grab a coffee with friends in LA… after cosy Hawaiian getaway
[3] Pajiba – The Way the Media Reports on Kristen Stewart and Her Girlfriend Is Hilarious
[4] Tumblr – justgalpalthings archive
[6] Tumblr – memearchives
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