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Interesting article on the way female friendship is depicted
samjam
New York Posts: 9,283
A great read. I 100% thoughts? Friend posted it after I commented on how Taylor Swift's friend parade at her shows is pretty ridiculous.
http://nytimes.com/2015/08/21/t-magazine/female-bffs-power-couples.html?_r=0
"Who could be cynical about the rise of friendship? In recent movies, female friends have banded together to shoot guns from trucks (“Mad Max: Fury Road”) and sing a cappella (“Pitch Perfect”). On TV, they have spooned in Greenpoint (“Girls”) and found common ground in prison (“Orange Is the New Black”). Their stoner antics (“Broad City”) have liberated us from the slob dads of sitcoms. Once limited to sassy supporting roles, female friends are now the primary source of romantic tension themselves: making passive-aggressive phone calls, taking baths together, serving as sugar daddies, lying to each other, busting ghosts. Unlike traditional romance, friendship doesn’t force us into archaic gender roles or complicate our professional or sexual independence. It’s now the boyfriends who are vestigial, appearing only in bit parts like “timid suitor” or “obnoxious co-worker.”
Running parallel to this artistic phenomenon, however, is an anthropological one. Lately, we’ve been inundated with images of real-life best friends, triumphantly displayed. It’s difficult to get through a day on the Internet without looking at photos of women flaunting the depth of their intimacy by posing over dinner or watching television together in matching pajamas. We now flick through images not of celebrity couples but of celebrity friends: Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj eating hamburgers in matching varsity jackets; Taylor Swift with Karlie Kloss, Lorde, Selena Gomez, Ellie Goulding, Lena Dunham, her cat Olivia, the entire runway lineup of a Victoria’s Secret show; the U.S. women’s soccer team. The meme factories have responded to the popularity of pictures of best friends with maximum output, harvesting groups of women posing on beaches and in limos from celebrity Instagram feeds and presenting them in slide shows (see: “16 of Taylor Swift’s Best BFFs,” “Ranking Taylor Swift’s 25 Best Best Friends,” “Taylor Swift Has Best Friends to Spare!” and “Taylor Swift Has More Best Friends Than You Ever Will“) and labeling these images as “#friendspiration” and “#squadgoals.”
Picture-perfect groups of friends on Instagram make me wonder whether Bridget Jones’s idea of “smug marrieds” could also apply to “squads” and why “The Stepford Wives” hasn’t been re-envisioned with a friendship plot. The portraits seem to be asking a lot of impolite questions: Do you have as many friends as we do? How did you celebrate your birthday? Do you regularly drink prosecco over plates of fruit at Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar? Have you betrayed your gender by preferring the company of men? You don’t have a friend with whom you publicly exchange photographs of your manicures? What’s wrong with you? If female friendship is so uplifting, then why do these photos make us feel the opposite — unbalanced and unsure?
I used to think that friendship as performed for an audience would end with middle school, but the past 10 years of technology have changed that expectation. In social media, friendship gets fixed and mounted. It loses its dramatic tension. It becomes a presentation of happiness, an advertisement for friendship rather than an actual portrayal of it. Sometimes, scrolling through photos of women I know looking carefully hungover in front of a perfectly composed brunch, or lying on a blanket in a park in crop tops, or posting screenshots of their exuberant text messages, I’m reminded of something Marnie once said on “Girls”: “I thought that this would be a good opportunity to have fun together and prove to everyone via Instagram that we can still have fun as a group.” Mimicking the advertiser’s strategy, these pictures of delightful fun inevitably provoke a feeling of lack or longing in the consumer of the image.
When I think of depictions of friendships that have moved me, I find myself thinking mostly of books — of those passages in novels that illuminate friendship by its moments of thorniness, by the heartbreak it can cause. Real friendship is complex. It’s the sadness of Elizabeth Bennet when her friend Charlotte Lucas marries the odious Mr. Collins in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s Leah and Natalie’s complicated dance of haughtiness and need in Zadie Smith’s “NW.” It’s the once-a-week limit Vivian Gornick has with her friend Leonard in “The Odd Woman and the City” (because men can be friends too). The best works of art about friendship resonate by showing how our closest friends have a way of ruining our attempts to present ourselves as perfect; how those picturesque moments are belied by other truths.
That is why, when we read about the rivalrous love of the friendship between Elena and Lila in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan trilogy, we are kept company by the friendship depicted, not made to feel more alone. In the flaws of these characters, we see our own blind spots; we see how to become more compassionate friends.
Friendship stories might have replaced tales of romantic love, but the best ones stop themselves from purveying easy clichés of their own — whether clichés about feminist solidarity or about mean girls (sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two). Close friendships are worth celebrating — but it is how they look at their least photogenic moments that proves their veracity."
http://nytimes.com/2015/08/21/t-magazine/female-bffs-power-couples.html?_r=0
"Who could be cynical about the rise of friendship? In recent movies, female friends have banded together to shoot guns from trucks (“Mad Max: Fury Road”) and sing a cappella (“Pitch Perfect”). On TV, they have spooned in Greenpoint (“Girls”) and found common ground in prison (“Orange Is the New Black”). Their stoner antics (“Broad City”) have liberated us from the slob dads of sitcoms. Once limited to sassy supporting roles, female friends are now the primary source of romantic tension themselves: making passive-aggressive phone calls, taking baths together, serving as sugar daddies, lying to each other, busting ghosts. Unlike traditional romance, friendship doesn’t force us into archaic gender roles or complicate our professional or sexual independence. It’s now the boyfriends who are vestigial, appearing only in bit parts like “timid suitor” or “obnoxious co-worker.”
Running parallel to this artistic phenomenon, however, is an anthropological one. Lately, we’ve been inundated with images of real-life best friends, triumphantly displayed. It’s difficult to get through a day on the Internet without looking at photos of women flaunting the depth of their intimacy by posing over dinner or watching television together in matching pajamas. We now flick through images not of celebrity couples but of celebrity friends: Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj eating hamburgers in matching varsity jackets; Taylor Swift with Karlie Kloss, Lorde, Selena Gomez, Ellie Goulding, Lena Dunham, her cat Olivia, the entire runway lineup of a Victoria’s Secret show; the U.S. women’s soccer team. The meme factories have responded to the popularity of pictures of best friends with maximum output, harvesting groups of women posing on beaches and in limos from celebrity Instagram feeds and presenting them in slide shows (see: “16 of Taylor Swift’s Best BFFs,” “Ranking Taylor Swift’s 25 Best Best Friends,” “Taylor Swift Has Best Friends to Spare!” and “Taylor Swift Has More Best Friends Than You Ever Will“) and labeling these images as “#friendspiration” and “#squadgoals.”
Picture-perfect groups of friends on Instagram make me wonder whether Bridget Jones’s idea of “smug marrieds” could also apply to “squads” and why “The Stepford Wives” hasn’t been re-envisioned with a friendship plot. The portraits seem to be asking a lot of impolite questions: Do you have as many friends as we do? How did you celebrate your birthday? Do you regularly drink prosecco over plates of fruit at Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar? Have you betrayed your gender by preferring the company of men? You don’t have a friend with whom you publicly exchange photographs of your manicures? What’s wrong with you? If female friendship is so uplifting, then why do these photos make us feel the opposite — unbalanced and unsure?
I used to think that friendship as performed for an audience would end with middle school, but the past 10 years of technology have changed that expectation. In social media, friendship gets fixed and mounted. It loses its dramatic tension. It becomes a presentation of happiness, an advertisement for friendship rather than an actual portrayal of it. Sometimes, scrolling through photos of women I know looking carefully hungover in front of a perfectly composed brunch, or lying on a blanket in a park in crop tops, or posting screenshots of their exuberant text messages, I’m reminded of something Marnie once said on “Girls”: “I thought that this would be a good opportunity to have fun together and prove to everyone via Instagram that we can still have fun as a group.” Mimicking the advertiser’s strategy, these pictures of delightful fun inevitably provoke a feeling of lack or longing in the consumer of the image.
When I think of depictions of friendships that have moved me, I find myself thinking mostly of books — of those passages in novels that illuminate friendship by its moments of thorniness, by the heartbreak it can cause. Real friendship is complex. It’s the sadness of Elizabeth Bennet when her friend Charlotte Lucas marries the odious Mr. Collins in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s Leah and Natalie’s complicated dance of haughtiness and need in Zadie Smith’s “NW.” It’s the once-a-week limit Vivian Gornick has with her friend Leonard in “The Odd Woman and the City” (because men can be friends too). The best works of art about friendship resonate by showing how our closest friends have a way of ruining our attempts to present ourselves as perfect; how those picturesque moments are belied by other truths.
That is why, when we read about the rivalrous love of the friendship between Elena and Lila in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan trilogy, we are kept company by the friendship depicted, not made to feel more alone. In the flaws of these characters, we see our own blind spots; we see how to become more compassionate friends.
Friendship stories might have replaced tales of romantic love, but the best ones stop themselves from purveying easy clichés of their own — whether clichés about feminist solidarity or about mean girls (sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two). Close friendships are worth celebrating — but it is how they look at their least photogenic moments that proves their veracity."
"Sometimes you find yourself having to put all your faith in no faith."
~not a dude~
2010: MSGx2
2012: Made In America
2013: Pittsburgh, Brooklynx2, Hartford, Baltimore
2014: Leeds, Milton Keynes, Detroit
2015: Global Citizen Festival
2016: Phillyx2, MSGx2, Fenwayx2
2018: Barcelona, Wrigleyx2
~not a dude~
2010: MSGx2
2012: Made In America
2013: Pittsburgh, Brooklynx2, Hartford, Baltimore
2014: Leeds, Milton Keynes, Detroit
2015: Global Citizen Festival
2016: Phillyx2, MSGx2, Fenwayx2
2018: Barcelona, Wrigleyx2
0
Comments
The thing about female friends is that females tend to really change a lot when they have children. And that's fine. Perfectly understandable. But unless you also have babies, they don't tend to stay good friends after that. Moms apparently have to be friends with other moms, exclusively. They seem to become unable or unwilling to relate to non-moms the second they give birth. Of course they will want to have friends that are parents so they can share those experiences with others. But they also seem to specifically withdraw from the people who aren't parents. That's what my experience tells me, anyway (obviously it's a generalization...?? Is it? It's actually happened to 100% of the women I know, so maybe it's not a generalization. But there are always exceptions to the rule I figure. I just haven't met any exceptions.
I wonder if (and how?) today's climate of social media plays a part - posting photos, tweeting gushing stuff about others, etc. - in not accurately reflecting reality, in attempting to enhance it? "Picture-perfect", as the article mentions.
Interesting subject!
For me, I have always had a very small friend group of down to earth girls, and generally share the same 'march to your own drum' values, never giving a shit about being 'cool.' Totally different from a lot of other people I do know. Including my sister and my mom's bf's 2 girls. Last week, my sister and his oldest, both 19, were talking about how his youngest, 13, gets the most likes on Instagram. They also talked about a "good ratio"--how many likes you've gotten verses when you posted the picture. People will even take pictures down if they don't get a lot of likes out of 'embarrassment.' Teens these days. Geez.
It's kinda like the concert/phone-out-the-whole-time thing. Wonder how much more people would get out of things if they weren't so concerned with capturing moments/what others thought.
~not a dude~
2010: MSGx2
2012: Made In America
2013: Pittsburgh, Brooklynx2, Hartford, Baltimore
2014: Leeds, Milton Keynes, Detroit
2015: Global Citizen Festival
2016: Phillyx2, MSGx2, Fenwayx2
2018: Barcelona, Wrigleyx2
Don't get me wrong, I've had close female friends, but they change when something big in their life happens, boyfriends, marriage, kids, break-ups,divorce.
I have a good group of girls I chat with...the only problem is that we live hundreds and thousands of miles away from each other. I don't need a BFF to define me, I define myself, a great friend is always a bonus.
- Christopher McCandless
There are the basic differences, it gets WAY more complex than that, but I would bore you with th entirety of it. However the major difference is this. Humans forget the good times and only remember the bad times in friendship, often excluding those that have pissed them off either personally (the greatest offense) or socially. But the animals remember that their group survived well together and former Clique-mates are always forgiven minor trespasses, and welcomed with great joy into newer established cliques. Humans do this too if they find someone that is not threatening or is easy going.. ( a push over).
As for my social circle, it is just me and a cat; outside of here. Because it's safe.Scooter will never stab me in the back to benefit from my loss..he'll never start rumors about me, or steal a boyfriend ( not that I have to worry about that ever again, as the whole ' no Sex before marriage' rule eliminates the possibility of a relationship in this day of ' we texted. ... So, let's sleep together
next.."). So I DID have one female friend that I allowed into my world, that I met while in Rehab.. Then she moved to LA. Such is always my luck. I finally make friends.. They move..
As for this social trend of entourages. Humans are arrogant beings in both sides of the coin. For every action a group of humans makes, Nine times out of ten, there is one ulterior motive behind each person repreeented. Very rarely do you find the opposite.so wether your friends are male or female, if you have close, honest, and sure fire friends, keep them near and dear, for you have a rarety hardly found in the human realm.
WH, it's so interesting what you said, certain points, like the whole 'everybody is equal in the animal cliques, but not for humans'. I've always wondered why people have to 'rank' their friends, now I realize that sure, I'm easygoing, but I won't take shit from others either, I have no problem calling people out on their BS, just keeping it real, don't need the drama, the fake-ness, the games...grow the fuck up.
- Christopher McCandless
Also you said it's the Bard but I've heard Shakespeare and Homer both called that so heeeeelp. Warning: Obnoxiously broad generalizations ahead! (Yes I'm ashamed of myself)
Look, I know NOTHING about this but I'd hazard a guess that it has more to do with women unconsciously needing/desiring to be understood more than men do. Men can maintain meaningful relationships with people they don't "get", whose experiences they don't share, but with women, we require more empathy than that. So when it comes to shit like a new relationship or a kid, we lose sight of those friends who are not also having those experiences because regardless of all the other factors if they don't have those same experiences they aren't going to/capable of understanding our experience enough to directly relate, which is what we crave.
I'll ring the echo bell here cuz most of my closest friends including those whom I've been friends with longest are male. I've always had girl friends its just that they don't like me for very long and tend to go away after a while. That's not something that's unique to that age when your friends start getting married and knocked up (which is current, for me) nor is it any more noticeable now than it was a decade ago. It just sort of is and it stopped bothering me a long time ago.
It's also worth mentioning that women are judged more harshly than men - including by other women. Women are also more defined by their relationships than men are. (That's patriarchy not some opinion I'm advocating, I don't think it's right but I can't deny that it exists - so a woman is viewed through the lens of motherhood, wifehood? is wifehood a word? and etc who happens to be a person, but men are simply persons with those associations, kids, wife, car.) So your girl friend gets a new man and disappears on you for a few months but then turns up at your birthday or whatever and apologizes for not being around and updates you on her new relationship. Whether you mean to or not your ass is judging her to some degree for being "that girl" that forgets her friends when she gets a new man. For spending your time together talking about him. For not having been available when you wanted her, even though she's there right now. Then next week you see your guy friend who couldn't make your birthday cuz he was with his new girlfriend in Vegas or something. You give him a knock upside his head and tell him he's buying your dinner and then talk about the girlfriend and the Vegas trip. You're not judging him for not being around, you're easier on him for missing your birthday than you are on your girl friend for missing Tuesday, and his absence doesn't become the focus of your time together. That's cuz you are socialized not to judge him as harshly as her. Again, I don't think this is the RIGHT way for society to exist but I can't deny that I acknowledge these existing structures. (Come at me bro!)
More than that when men become fathers and they are less available for football parties or whatever it's not made into a federal case the way us girls tend to do with women who've recently become mothers. And keep in mind my statement about judgement flows both ways - so we negatively view mothers who withdraw from their pre-motherhood friendships in favor of other-mother friendships, but if those same mothers were to leave the baby at home once a week to go out partying we would view them negatively for doing that too. So. I mean. Really.
I swear to god I had a point when I started typing. Honest. I did. Thanks for posting Sam I wouldn'tve read it otherwise.
LIVEFOOTSTEPS.ORG/USER/?USR=435
LIVEFOOTSTEPS.ORG/USER/?USR=435
Also you said it's the Bard but I've heard Shakespeare and Homer both called that so heeeeelp.
Shakespeare. Sonnets did not exist during Homer's heyday/
And it's basically Shakespeare's ode to deep and loving friendships. The poet is saying that when he feels all kinds of negative thoughts weighing him down (bad luck, despair, self-loathing, jealousy, envy), all he has to do is think of his BFF and their bond, and then, well, "Fuck it, Dude. Let's go bowling."
And it's basically Shakespeare's ode to deep and loving friendships. The poet is saying that when he feels all kinds of negative thoughts weighing him down (bad luck, despair, self-loathing, jealousy, envy), all he has to do is think of his BFF and their bond, and then, well, "Fuck it, Dude. Let's go bowling."
Never would've got that as being about a friend. Thanks for the explanation.
LIVEFOOTSTEPS.ORG/USER/?USR=435
It's a common belief among Shakespeare scholars that this sonnet was addressed to the Fair Youth (a good male friend/patron of the Bard's).
The more romantic/sexual love sonnets are far steamier, and it is believed that they are all addressed to the Dark Lady.
Neither the Fair Youth nor the Dark Lady have been positively identified, but of course, there are lots of theories.
my brother's x-wife goes through female friends like a hot knife through butter. she's a big time prick.
"Hear me, my chiefs!
I am tired; my heart is
sick and sad. From where
the sun stands I will fight
no more forever."
Chief Joseph - Nez Perce
And
I suspectyou're one of those guys who genuinely likes women (the non-dis-likable ones, that is).