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"We have chosen each other": the strength of female friendship

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Girlhood: the marker of coming of age is largely defined by the intimate relationships and connections a young person has with others in their life, and for most young girls, those experiences are tied to relationships with other girls in their lives. Female friendships are often the pinnacle of a young girl’s social development, and Lisa Diamond highlights the intense and consuming nature of young female bonds, “ Emotional tenor resembling romantic relationships, , involving feelings of excitement, desire for self revelation, mutual understanding, fascination & preoccupation, possessiveness & idealizing” (Diamond, 2002). This demonstrates how the intensity of female friendships when coming of age can often resemble what might otherwise be viewed as romantic, or “homoerotic,” which suggests that the intimacy that comes with intense female friendships can often transcend conventional boundaries of what friendship is supposed to look and feel like. The complexity and strength of female bonds is described in Audre Lorde’s work from “Sister Outsider”:  “We have chosen each other and the edge of each other's battles; the war is the same if we lose.” For young girls, in the face of dealing with puberty, oppression from patriarchal structures , and the inevitable emotionally turbulent growing pains of being a girl in the world, strong female bonds are sometimes what makes all the difference.

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As the sun goes down, I think about how every day the same sun rises and it sets- it is ritualistic and repetitive, and with each new day there is more opportunity for change and growth. I watch two girls chat and laugh with each other as they take in the view, and take in each other. As an observer and a people watching enthusiast, I can see the intimacy that these two girls share with each other: the casual intimacy of sharing food with each other, and sitting side by side, almost touching in a way that indicates that they share a close connection. Watching this moment shared by two strangers makes me think of Audre Lorde’s quote, “Change means growth, and growth can be painful. But we sharpen self definition by exposing the self in work and struggle together with those whom we define as different from ourselves, although sharing the same goals” (Lorde, 1984). In this quote, Lorde is speaking about differences, and how embracing the differences strengthens, rather than weakens, human connection and mutual understanding. In Girlhood, young women share experiences with each other, and also have experiences that are entirely different, but their intimate understanding of each other is not contingent on differences and similarities. Instead, these differences serve as means of developing an understanding of one another beyond just what they may have in common, which then can also reveal underlying revelations about themselves.

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When discussing the intensity of female friendships, it is crucial to acknowledge that while for some girls, these bonds are purely platonic, for others, these bonds are in a way an introduction to attraction and desire outside of heterosexuality. Maia Kobabe touches on this, “My deepest emotional relationships have always been with women. Did that mean I was a lesbian?” (Kobabe, 2019). Oftentimes, the queer experience is disregarded in dominant narratives discussing girlhood, as the cis-heternormative expectations for girlhood contains stories about sleepovers with your best friends gossiping about the latest boy you have a crush on and venturing into the dating world as a presumed straight girl. This fails to represent the experiences of girls who do not fit within these dominant hegemonic ideals (Lorber, 2010), as for young queer girls, their experiences as girls who do not center and desire men places them outside of the normative social order. Additionally, if there are other intersecting identities at play, such as race and class, they also affect the way a young girl navigates her role in society and with other peers. This being said, the relationship between a person and their society is attributed to a variety of factors, and queerness is just one of them.

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Girlhood contains a multitude of shared moments, rituals, and practices that while often rooted in gender roles, can also serve as spaces for embracing and expressing aspects of gender together. One of the most commonly represented scenes of Girlhood, whether through media depictions, story telling, or a young girl’s dreams of her future teenage friend group is the experience of getting ready together with your female friends. This tradition, while often written off by stereotypes and misogyny, is safe haven for girls of all ages to share their thoughts and feelings and bond with their female peers, all while engaging in a collective activity in which they can help each other, lift eachother up, and provide each other with a space to engage in casual shared intimacy in the most mundane moments. As Constance Grady states in her article, “...the rejection of girliness was in itself misogynistic: girliness, third-wavers argued, was not inherently less valuable than masculinity or androgyny” (Grady, 2018). Oftentimes, people-including other girls- will look down on displays of “girly-ness” or feed into “not like the other girl” narratives which imply that girls who do enjoy taking part in “girly” activities are somehow inferior to girls who do not, which  isolates the girls who do not fit into normative ideals of what girls are expected to be like, and further creates a divide that makes it more difficult for these girls to connect with their own peers.

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Boygenius live on tour, embracing at the end of their show. 

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The unification of queer women, both in girlhood and beyond that into adulthood, can serve as an inspiration to younger queer people who may struggle with navigating their own feelings and identities and figuring out how they fit in within their society and social environment. Pictured above is the band “Boygenius,” composed of three queer musicians (Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus) who created a band together to spread queer joy and show young fans that platonic intimacy between queer people is equally as important as romantic intimacy. The bond shared between the members of this band highlights what Diamond states about the creation of “separate spheres of platonic as distinct and less intense than romantic..,” and how oftentimes platonic and romantic intimacy is sharply divided and forced into rigid categories, when in reality, queer intimacy can often transcend these boundaries-both in young female companionship and in adulthood.