lucy & ethel

One of the all-time great urban legends is the one where Lucille Ball contractually required her I Love Lucy co-star Vivian Vance to remain 20 lbs. overweight.

I always heard it was the producers who wanted the contractual stipulation, and that the weight required was 10 lbs over, but that's why they are called 'urban legends'-- the facts vary from storyteller to storyteller.

Anyway, it's not true.

But when it comes to the characters of Lucy Ricardo & Ethel Mertz and their places in pop cultural history, there is something that I tend to notice, a phenomenon that occurs between women friends, usually in the younger aspects of their lives.

I call it the "Lucy & Ethel Syndrome", or LES.


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Comedic pairs dominate the world of entertainment: Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Lewis & Martin, Hope & Crosby, Ralph Kramden & Ed Norton... even Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan tap into this comic symmetry.

There's very few female duos out there. Ask someone to name a famous female pair and you'll get Thelma & Louise... but they weren't supposed to be funny. Tragic maybe, but not intentionally funny.

The next in line is, of course, Lucy & Ethel. They are right up there with the male pairs I listed, because the formula is the same: two seeming opposites joined together as friends who support each other through thick and thin. One is a bit manic, flighty and outgoing; the other is stable, steady but unadventurous. The Type A half of the pair is always enlisting the Type B half as a partner in crime, to help pull off hair-brained schemes.

What's amazing is that while there are plenty of real-life females out there who fit the Lucy/Ethel dichotomy to a tee, there's very few real-life males out there who subscribe to the formula laid down by such famous duos as I listed before. If there is any one famous pair that guys emulate, it's Jay and Silent Bob from Kevin Smith's movies.

More than the others I mentioned, Jay and Silent Bob accurately capture the true dynamic that occurs between male friends: both are on equal footing with each other but choose to express themselves in different modes. Neither of them can be considered sidekicks in the classic vein; in a way, both of them are sidekicks, but one does not eclipse the other.

Jay is the talkative one, but Bob's silence is louder and more informative. Jay gets all the attention and response but Bob (when he elects to speak) has the deeper advice to impart. And yet, Bob lets Jay speak for him 99% of the time.

With the LES, there is a definite inequity. Lucy is the star of the show, and Ethel is the sidekick. There never was an episode where Ethel asked Lucy to help her with her loony antics.

There was never any reciprocity.


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I've seen the Lucy & Ethel Syndrome manifest itself in several forms over the years. Its basic components remain the same: one girl is attractive and knows it but needs someone to come along with her on her insane quests as some sort of validation; the other girl is sometimes ugly, sometimes attractive but not TOO attractive so as to not upstage the other girl, and passively agrees to whatever the other suggests.

Years ago I dated a girl who fashioned herself a "Lucy" and she told me once that she needed a foil, an "Ethel", in order to function. She was pretty forthright about it, and from that point on I started referring to it as the LES.

This girl consciously sought out girls who would tolerate her bullcrap but who weren't threatening in the slightest. Then she would compete with this girl, which is the equivalent of helping train a Special Olympics athlete just so you can have someone to beat in a sporting event.

The hapless part of the duo, the "Ethel", was always asked to humiliate herself or defer her own satisfaction in order for the "Lucy" to gain a sufficient amount of narcissistic supply in order to feed her own ego. The only times when "Ethel" received any validation were when "Lucy" deemed it worthy.

This is more common an occurrence than you think.


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One of the most memorable instances that I can recall concerning this Lucy/Ethel dichotomy happened in high school, a virtual breeding ground for this sort of behavior.

The Lucy in this case was an ex-girlfriend who called me up one day and asked me if I wanted to go to the beach the following weekend. The way she phrased it made me think that she and I were going alone; since I still had feelings for her, I agreed to it and got my hopes up.

Mid-week, I called Lucy to confirm the date. As I pressed her for more details, suddenly the plans seemed to chang: in addition to the two of us, she invited her Ethel along with a guy that Lucy had a crush on but was too afraid to approach on her own. Ethel was along to help Lucy but apparently Ethel resisted, necessitating Lucy to bring me along to keep her company.

Lucy admitted after the fact that she had intended to bring Ethel and the new guy along when she invited me. But Lucy played it off like she wasn't trying to set herself up with this guy; she made it seem like a harmless excursion, and accused me of being paranoid.

But I knew better.

Of course, I was furious. I still loved Lucy and I'd be damned if I was going to stand there like a dumb-ass while she tried to mack on some guy. Not only that, but I think the plan was that Ethel was going to get to be alone with me at some point, because she had a crush on me as well.

I think that if Lucy had just come out and told me straight up that she needed me to play a wingman, then maybe (just possibly) I would've agreed. It's highly unlikely, but I would've at least considered it, and if Lucy had been upfront and honest then that would've influenced my decision.

What made me angry was not the plan itself-- in a way, I admired its simple complexity --but the fact that Lucy thought she could dupe me into it. I don't appreciate being thought of as someone who is easily led.

Lucy was playing me for a fool, which happens a lot because I have the sort of face that people mistake for an idiot. But my brain is far from that, and I saw it coming a mile away.

The day of our weekend beach sojourn, I had a plan in mind. We arrived and set up our spot in the sun. There was a cooler with picnic snacks and towels and sunglasses and sunblock and all the details that the girls no doubt spent hours the night before inventoring and approving.

Nothing was left to chance.

The minute we were set up, I got up and ran straight into the water. I swam and body-surfed for at least an hour. Then, when I came out to dry off, I sat down next to the others.

As soon as Lucy began to put her plan into effect, I got up to use the bathroom. Then, when I returned, I stuck around just long enough for them to think I was not going anywhere and snuck off to walk by myself along the shoreline.

Ethel was too passive to pull an audible and improvise, and Lucy was upset because she would get no time alone with her man, who was oblivious to everything going on.

I played this out quite artfully for the remainder of the day at the beach. It was a shitty thing to do, yes, but what was the alternative? Sitting around with Ethel while Lucy and her new man were frolicking like kids?

No, I'm not that kind of guy. Lucy should've known that I wouldn't put up with this. I was not going to be pushed over so easily.

By the time the day was over, Lucy was steaming mad. Ethel was confused, having had a wonderful day at the beach but wondering what went wrong with the plan; and of course the other guy was completely clueless as to what really went down.

Things began to simmer in the car, and then they boiled, and finally things overheated. Lucy and I got into a terrible argument: at one point she threatened to kick me out of the car (she was driving, even though it was Ethel's car) and almost let slip about her manipulative plan when I goaded her about it. I was all smiles, a mischievious grin impishly smeared across my leering face. I had her number, and I was having my petty revenge for her ridiculous scheme.

Lucy was angry at me for a long time. But she never had the nerve to approach that guy again, because of the way she short-circuited in front of us.

I was proud of myself, for not playing the role of the male Ethel.

As for the girl who played Ethel that day at the beach, she and I eventually hooked up on our own, without Lucy around to try and fix things.


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I still see it happen all the time.

Two girls I was in a band with had the syndrome, and it led to the band breaking up.

Almost every girlfriend I ever had knew some girl they could drag along on their selfish whims, and the girls who were consigned to Ethel status were always willing to be used because it was exciting to go along for the craziness.

It happens with guys too. It's more of a Bart Simpson/Milhous Van Houten Syndrome, but it happens. I was in a few of those when I was younger and yet I had the foresight to extract myself from those situations before they turned bad.

More often than not, though, guys tend to want to be around other guys they consider their equals, not to compete but to share experiences. Like Snoop Dogg said, it ain't no fun if the homies can't have none, and for the most part guys tend to take care of their own.

Women tend to use each other ruthlessly to get the things they want. Most of the time it is rooted in competition, such as who has the more desirable mate or who makes more money or who has more guys hitting on them.

This is not to say that all girl duos have LES. And there's even been some examples of a girl who is obviously a Lucy playing Ethel while the obvious Ethel asumes the Lucy role. Either way, it exists and it is very real.

Because of my experiences with women diagnosed with LES, I am probably more qualified than most to identify the characteristics. So if you are a woman out there and feel like you are being asked to be an unwilling Ethel, or if you are a Lucy and are in denial or need help, just e-mail me or leave a comment here on my blog.

There are ways to combat this affliction, but it takes a hearty resolve and some backbone. It's a difficult disorder to treat because of the heavy delusions that possess the Lucy half of the duo. The Lucies almost always fail to see how their self-centered ways cause pain to those around them. And even if the Lucy is dynamic and fun to be around, it all goes out the window the minute something goes off-script.

The person who ends up bearing the brunt of this, ironically, is Ethel, the very person who gave of herself to help Lucy.

So you see, this isn't some victimless crime where no one really gets hurt. And it sometimes happens on such a subliminal scale that it can easily be denied.

But a disease is a disease, and this one needs to be cured.