Diamonds may be forever, but it turns out that a gay boy is actually a girl's best friend, according to a the book that is the first definitive guide to the "fag hag". That many straight women set great store by gay male friends won't surprise fans who've watched Will and Grace sharing the secrets of their souls, or Sex and the City's Carrie and her screaming-queen buddy Stanford or Madonna and Rupert Everett, on- and off-screen.
"Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys" chronicles the (mostly) ups and (occasional) downs of having a gay man as a girl's best friend. -- true tales of love, lust and friendship between straight women and gay men was launched in New York with a rainbow of hysterical real life stories and a few predictably melodramatic tear-jerkers.
One of the book's editors, Melissa De La Cruz, said she sought to puncture the high-camp stereotype by telling how her gay male co-editor Tom Dolby was the rock-solid shoulder who was most there for her out of all her friends when she suffered a miscarriage and she and her husband were heartbroken. "He was a real man," she said. Much happier reinforcing the stereotypes was fashion writer Karen Robinovitz, who had "bridesgays" attending her at her wedding instead of bridesmaids and whose best friends and objects of unrequited lust growing up were always gay men. "My friends muse that my love affair with boys who like boys is out of emotional safety, but I wholeheartedly disagree. It's all about fashion," writes Robinovitz in her chapter Shop Girls.