Mapping the origins of America's favorite insult

What do Tucker Carlson, Vanilla Ice, and that guy who just ordered grape-flavored vodka with sugar-free Red Bull have in common?

Let's see. Are they jerks? Maybe, but that doesn't cover the bow tie. Losers? Yes, but such a tepid term does a disservice to these guys' supreme, majestic lameness. Dickheads, boneheads, assholes? Yeah ... but. I know: You had the real answer back at "sugar-free." There is only one way to describe them. They are douchebags.

Douchebag: We said it about Mr. Knowlton in algebra, and now we're saying it again. A lot. (And with colorful lexical and taxonomical variation: fratdouche; eco-douche; douchetard; douchenozzle; even douchebaguette, for girls.)

Over the past several years, as you might have noticed if you have watched Family Guy, Saturday Night Live, The Bachelorette, or The Daily Show (e.g., "Robert Novak: Douchebag of Liberty," c. 2004), or have read any blog, ever—including one maintained by John Mayer, who famously defined the term, so to speak, in 2007—douchebag has enjoyed a renaissance perhaps more pervasive than any other retro-linguistic relic. ("Dink," anyone?) It has become as ubiquitous as, well, actual douchebags. So much so, in fact, that some claim it's already way jumped the shark: Esquire has called for a moratorium on the word; Gawker conducted a search for an apt replacement.

Both failed. Turns out that people—even the feminists!—just love them the 'chebag. So why douchebag? Why now? It's probably partly because today, anything old-school, retro, and ironic is cool, unless you're douchey about it. But that's not all there is to the douche story.

First, some history. "I think douchebag came back into use after the metrosexual mated with an orange, but I've definitely heard it used for years," says Jay Louis, founder of the blog Hot Chicks With Douchebags and author of the book of the same name.

Technically, no one can say for sure which genius foul-mouthed sailor, let's say, in which boot camp for which war coined a creative new term for his reviled commanding officer that, post-deployment, caught on and spread.

The OED credits Henry Miller's 1934 Tropic of Cancer (object of the great Miller v. Douchebags obscenity trial of 1961, the year the book came out in the States) with early print usage of "douche-bag"—but as actual bag of douche, not epithet. Following the Miller trail, though, we can find this conversation in Plexus (1953) between Mona and Ulrich: "There was one spot, a restaurant, I think, over on Sheridan Square." "You mean Minnie Douchebag's hangout?" "Minnie Douchebag?" "Yes, that crazy fairy who sings and plays the piano ... and wears women's clothes."

Which brings us to one reason why douchebag goes where "scumbag" does not. It's not an anti-gay slur, but, as my friend Kyle points out: "The 'douche' part is feminine, and the 'bag' part is masculine. Someone who is 'douchey' has taken on the feminizing aspects of the taste culture—hair gel, spray-on tan—but the 'bag' part implies a masculine creepiness, a 'perv' factor that is about posturing and sticking tongues toward or into unwanted locations."

Speaking of the feminine, though, plenty of women still find the term, you know, not so fresh. "It's yet another insult that puts men down by invoking women. In other words, it's apparently a really gross thing to be salinated water that's squirted up a vagina. It makes me overuse the term 'asshole,'" says my friend Catherine.

Berkeley linguist Robin Lakoff, PhD, an expert on gender and language, agrees: "It's not the only insult to men that gets its sting by being insulting to women. Think of 'bastard' and 'son of a bitch,' both of which are about someone's mother's nonchastity," Lakoff says. "It also raises the question of why it's easy to insult a man by referring to him as a female or female-related thing, while there are no parallel ways to insult women."

And yet, search the most popular and respected feminist websites, and there it is: Douchebag of the Day, and more. Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon is also a big fan. "It's like calling someone a dick, except worse," she says. "A dick has power; a douche only thinks he does."

Marcotte maintains that the douche revival has nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with the Web. As online discourse proliferated, she says, so too did the need for new vocabulary, especially insults (cf. "asshat"). Marcotte, in fact, dedicates a whole subsection of her book, It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments, to arguing that douchebag, along with "tool," are at least two epithets you can safely sling without fear of inadvertent sexism. (Lexical aside: Tool is perhaps douchebag's closest synonym. However, it has been observed that someone who goes from being a total fucking tool to attain full douchebag status has "crossed the Federline.")

If you think about it, douche actually deserves to be a bad word. Show me a medical professional who actually recommends regular douching—which is blamed for yeast infections, pelvic inflammatory disease, and more—and I'll show you ... a douchebag.

"Douching itself offends me, and is part of a patriarchal marketing conspiracy to make women think they smell bad down there," says my friend Marjorie. "So calling someone a douchebag is not an insult to women, but an insult to those who make retarded products." ("Retarded," for better or for worse, is also back in full force.) In other words, it's the douches that suck, not the ladyparts.

Also: In a world where "jerk!" and "asshole!" are the played-out cries of a mascara-streaked woman scorned, using "douchebag!" can, arguably, give a girl an edge.

Douchebag is also extremely fun to say. Two syllables, after all, are better than one ("bitch" versus "bi-atch."). Plus, "You get the pursed lips of the 'dou' sound and then the squished face and long tail of 'chhhhhe,'" says Marjorie. "Delicious."

And it seems, of course, that we get more opportunities to say it every day.

"Douchebaggery is really an outgrowth of 'Guido' style, but it's rapidly spread through hip-hop, Ed Hardy, and Armani Exchange to become the dominant pollutant of modern culture," says Jay Louis, who is indeed the expert.

But I'd argue that there are not necessarily more douchebags today. Rather, there are more douchebags being reported. We have always had douchebags—Roy Cohn, Henry VIII, Jacob (son of Isaac)—but never before have we had resources like The Daily Show and YouTube to open so many windows onto douchitude. (Only a handful of people would have seen this fellow in Cabo; 452,727 and counting have seen him on the Interwebs.)

So, one day, perhaps, the word will be so played that only douchebags will use it. But until then, douche on. Woot!