Upon typing ‘female friendships’ into Google, you are presented with articles titled ‘The Complexities of Female Friendship’, and ‘Why do my female friendships fizzle out?’. Questions are posed to the searcher in ‘People also ask’, imploring ‘What is so special about female friendship?, and ‘Why are female friendships so close?’. This set of descriptions encompasses some of the many complexities and common misconceptions that surround the term ‘female friendship’, but also the beauty that lies within these relationships.
Sometimes overly complex and intense, female friendships, despite all the good, do have a tendency to be short-lived and perhaps a little unhealthy at times. However, the typical negative representation of women’s friendship within society is false – of course some relationships will turn sour, but isn’t that the same for everyone, not just women? Female friendships are complex, yes, but they are also enriching, and teach girls and women important lessons on who they are, what company they want to keep and what values they hold close.
Over the summer I read Dolly Alderton’s 2018 memoir, ‘everything I know about love’, and was overwhelmed with my connection to the book. Alderton consistently describes how through her rough times of teenhood and twenties the people she could always count on were her female friends, and I absolutely agree. While I value all relationships I am lucky enough to have with people of any gender, I agree with Dolly, ‘Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learnt from my long-term friendships with women”. The friendships I hold closest to me, and those that have taught me the most, are the ones I have with my female friends. Within her memoir, Alderton implies that often men, sometimes due to the lack of thought, or as a result of not caring, are simply not able to understand the complex emotions and bizarre experiences that women face day to day. Sadly, I have found this to be true; our experiences as women are completely unique to just that – being women. The comfort we find in our friendships with women is not just about being able to have a good time together, but about having a deep emotional understanding for the complexities we all face. Navigating societal standards, the strange, pervasive sexualisation of being 16, growing up, the safe space that is the club toilet. Sharing these universal experiences, and bonding over them, all as a result of being who we are, women, makes female friendships so valuable.
Asa Moberg, a Swedish journalist, comments within ‘The Importance Of Female Friendship’ on the relationship women have with friendship throughout history, stating that ‘friendship has often been portrayed as something primarily for men.’ and that ‘women, with their supposedly undeveloped brains, are incapable of such a noble relationship’. How glad I am that women have proved this statement to be wrong. I believe that female friendships are the biggest advantage to being a woman. The depths relationships with other women reach are ones that are, arguably, completely unique to us, something that men are sadly not likely to experience.
The women in my life have been a steadfast feature throughout adolescence and teenhood; and are still just as important as I enter my twenties. How lucky we are to have such richness around us, to find such comfort in each other. How lucky we are to have female friendships.