The Real Meaning of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”

Mine is a strange, obsessive-compulsive mind. A few weeks ago, out of nowhere, I got the urge to hear Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” A normal person would have gone to YouTube, had a listen and been done with it. Not me. I played the track 30 times, then began working my way through every cover version I could find, ranging from The Chipettes‘ take to Lauper’s own ‘94 remake titled “Hey Now” (I defy you to play the track and not immediately think of Hank Kingsley). This segued into researching the song’s history, which lead me to an astounding discovery: Cyndi Lauper neither wrote nor was the first artist to perform “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” It was created by Robert Hazard, a guinea out of Philadelphia. And the song, when sung from a man’s point of view…well, it takes on a whole different meaning.



The defining feminist pop anthem of the 1980s is actually a song about a guy who spends so much time crushing loose vag that his parents begin to worry. Just take a look at the lyrics. It isn’t exactly cracking the Da Vinci Code.


Phone rings in the middle of the night.


My father says, “My boy, what do you want with your life?”


Father, dear, you are the fortunate one.


Girls just want to have fun.


Can’t you picture it? A cramped, Philadelphia row house. Papa Wop, half asleep and livid that he’s been awakened at 3am on a work night by a booty call for his son, who’s 23, jobless and still living with his parents. He screams, “You lazy piece of shit, when will you stop messing around with these whores and get a job and a good woman?” Junior replies, “Pop, consider yourself lucky. Ma’s a classy woman. These girls today, they’re just a bunch of putanas. But, I must oblige them. Peace out.”


And how about verse two? Does it also further my theory that the song is about a world-class poonhound? You tell me.


Come home in the morning light.


My mother says, “My boy, you got to start living right.”


Don’t worry, Mother, dear, you’re still number one.


Girls just want to have fun.


These girls just want to have fun.


Why, yes. Yes it does. Mama Wop hasn’t slept a wink and has been pacing in the living room for hours because Junior has yet to come home. An hour after dawn, he finally struts in, disheveled, lips covered in more glaze than a Krispy Kreme and smelling like a can of Fancy Feast. “Junior, you are my son and I love you, but you disgust me,” she says with a sigh as she marches back to bed. Drunk on pussy, Junior laughs and shouts up the stairs “Ma, they’re nothing. I’ll always come back to you,” before walking to his room and collapsing on the mattress, awash in a stew of DNA. I rest my case.