“Big girl blouse” is a derogatory term used to describe a feeble or effeminate man who whines or is fussy. It originated in Great Britain and Australia in the 1960s and may have come from a phrase describing fluttering clothes. It is sometimes expressed as “big girl shirt” and is not commonly used in the United States. The phrase has made its way into art and entertainment.
The expression “big girl blouse” is a derogatory phrase used to describe a man who is feeble or feeble or who acts effeminate. The term, a British and Australian slang phrase, is also applied to a man who whines a lot or is particularly fussy. While sometimes used pejoratively, it is now more often used to make fun or make fun of. Originally from Great Britain, the phrase is not in common use in the United States. While some phrases once used exclusively to describe men are now applied to women as well, the phrase big girl blouse continues to be used almost exclusively to describe males.
As idioms go, this is a fairly new phrase, not coming into use until about the 1960s. The first written reference using the phrase is recorded in the 1969 sitcom Nearest and Dearest. Some attribute the phrase’s origins to the TV show, although other linguistic experts think it may have existed before that and may take its origins from a time when many people dried their clothes outdoors. The phrase “flutter like a big girl’s blouse” may be how the phrase was originally phrased. This phrase described a large piece of clothing that fluttered in the wind while line drying and was used to describe a man who was easily startled.
Rather than big girl blouse, the phrase is sometimes expressed as big girl shirt, although it has exactly the same meaning and is used in exactly the same way. It is probably just a variation of the original slang term or is the original slang term. A slang word shirty was popular in northern England as early as the 1840s and meant someone who was easily irritated. The phrases to take off your shirt and keep it on, both referring to someone preparing to fight, were also in use at the time and were said as a way to tell an angry person to calm down. There is some speculation that shirty, these two phrases and the big girl shirt are related in origin and entered common parlance at nearly the same time.
As in many idioms, the slang phrase big girl blouse has made its way into art and entertainment. An Australian program took the phrase as its headline in the 1990s. A comedy sketch, the original four episodes of Big Girl’s Blouse and the pilot remain popular online and on DVD.
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