"I stopped chasing the Hollywood vision of female friendship – and embraced the person I am"

[babymamalove]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/13/why-i-quit-hollywood-female-friendship

New article on the Guardian about female friendships. This is something I've been struggling with loads recently (trying and failing to form more female friendships), and wow. I completely relate to this article.

I'm also trying to get the point of accepting it because it is so soul destroying putting yourself out there and not getting much in return time and time again, and always being on the outskirts of group things and thinking its something like my personality e.g. I am boring or too 'nice'?

Does anyone else relate?

The whole article PMO tbh. Blatant self aggrandising and belittling of other women thinly disguised as self deprecation. "Ooh there's something wrong with me! Why or why do I only love art house films and not big brother? Or how I wish I could enjoy a baby shower instead of being compelled to photograph coffee! I'm destined to sit alone with my PHD and my earnestly bearded male friends while the girls have pink fluffy fun I don't understand...."

I've never in my life set out to form a 'friendship group'. Groups of friends have just happened, organically.
Throughout life they change, as people change / move / have different circumstances.

No partner.

Misanthrope isolationist with schizoid personality disorder.

I've tried partners, they each expected more than I was willing to give and were unwilling to give the little I expected.

Eta- Im Aware my issues have coloured my entire experience of life and relationships and left me cold and logical. Luckily my issues also negate any necessity for such relationships.

Agreed. I love arthouse films and have sod all interest in popular culture, but don't struggle with friendships, and, if I did, I wouldn't ascribe it to me being too edgy and off-kilter because, as you say, people with my interests aren't exactly rare.

(And LARPers always have mobs of fellow elf/Orc friends, otherwise there wouldn't be anyone to reenact the Battle of Helm's Deep with...)

I think that article is deeply silly, if only because the author seems to be mistaking a Hollywood confection of 'girl group' friendships for anything approaching reality. I've never seen The Golden Girls, but the characters in Sex and the City were a handy conceit to have a pool of different 'types' (the slut, the princess, the hardboiled careerist, and the self-indulgent narrator), while from what I remember about Bridesmaids, the whole point is that far from being a united 'girl group' Kristen Wiig's character has never met most of her supposed lifelong best friend's other bridesmaids, and develops an insane rivalry with one of them...? Hardly rosy.

People writing screenplays and novels write in either a single best friend or a small group, because it's easier than sketching in several completely unrelated friends or sets of friends, especially when the friends aren't the focus. I'm writing a novel where the heroine doesn't have close friends, only her sister, and I only wrote her sister in because part of the plot involves their mother dying, and I needed her to have someone to act against in the hospital. Bluntly, my focus is elsewhere, and I dont have space for my heroine to have an extensive social life!

The author seems to have failed to grasp this.

Mallard spotting 🤣🤣

I feel a bit sorry for her tbh. Yes there has been a media portrayal of idealised female relationships and few of us have a ‘crew’ but to not have anyone to go for a coffee with? I think she protests too much and would like someone really. I like having different friends to go and do different things with. I’ve learnt that my friends don’t necessarily mix well and that’s fine. I also don’t have one ‘best’ friend. But I have collected enough people through bits of my life and feel fortunate to have around 12 women who are fairly constant for the last 10 or more years. Friendship requires investment though. Of time, patience and a bit of flexibility often. Being really fixed on liking a certain group of things and not being willing to be interested in anything else (and making big generalisations about other groups/people) is going to make it challenging to build connections.

Even in that short article she's crowbarred in "quirky facts" about herself
She likes European Art House films..
speciality coffee,
documentaries about human rights abuses
Taking photos of auditoriums of old theatres
Fucking shit.
Most of her colleagues probably just wanted to natter bollocks about BGT or Big Brother, not listen to a preachy 'writer' wangling on about pretentious bollocks and PHDs.

@TuesdayWhistler are you normally in the habit of sneering at people whose interests are different from those of 'most' people? Because you're coming off as very shallow here.

Personally I think the writer sounds far more interesting than someone who wants to 'natter bollocks about BGT or Big Brother' as you put it, and believe it or not, she isn't the only person who is interested in wider issues in life rather than crappy reality TV. I'd rather talk to someone like her than someone who has no conversation besides what's on the television any day. Why assume that simply by having interests that aren't mainstream she is 'hard work'?

How disappointing that you feel the need to tear another woman down simply because you think her interests are 'pretentious'. Your theories on 'people people' contain a lot of reductive sweeping generalisations too imo.

So much one-size-fits-all sneering and misogyny on this thread. It's beyond me why some people feel the need to belittle women this way instead of accepting that we are all different.

I haven't read the article, but even the SATC friendship doesn't work in real life because they had a big falling out with Kim Catrell and aren't talking. Everyone should aspire to what works for them, not movie ideas.

I think some people are cut out for these 'bridesmaids', NCT buddies and school mums types of friendship groups, and some are not. Sure I'd like to have more friends with similar interests/to do things with, and have had best friends in the past (that didn't work out in the end), and at the moment I have a group of women I socialise with, but wouldn't call them close friends, and the group works best for me when everyone's together as one on one I sometimes find them quite boring and hard work 😉I like a good conversation, including about politics, current affairs, the arts etc, and I actually find the superficial chit chat really draining, I don't know how people can keep it up!

And it's a different story if you have friends you have grown up with, but I've moved around a lot so that only really works if you've stayed living in the same place or nearby.

'According to cinema and television, women are constantly forming incredible female friendships'

Anyone else spot the fatal flaw here....?😂

Thank you for the tag.

are you normally in the habit of sneering at people whose interests are different from those of 'most' people?

Normally? Maybe. My point was that her colleagues probably wanted to discuss their interests, not hers, which are, as you said, different from most people.

you're coming off as very shallow here.

if that's what you've taken from my posts, not much I can do about that.

Why assume that simply by having interests that aren't mainstream she is 'hard work'?

i was making many assumptions. Based on what is written. She shared her interests, but also that few people were interested in being her friend, which suggests that the people she talking to have no interest in what she's talking about. Hence, they may find her hard work.

Your theories on 'people people' contain a lot of reductive sweeping generalisations too imo.

Sweeping generalisations tend to happen when I talk about groups of people in a general way. I can't exactly discuss specific people beyond the writer as there are enough specific people mentioned in the article... And if you find them reductive, please, enlighten MN with your depth and breadth of knowledge.

I hope that has cleared things up.
I shall await your response, which I'm sure will be intelligent and measured.

God, this article is so sneery and quite misogynistic (as are some of these comments). Female friendship groups don't have to be shallow, or based on shopping and reality TV chit chat. You don't all have to be a "type" and there doesn't need to be a queen bee. These tropes are so condescending and patronising.

I have quite a few close female friends; some of whom could be described as a group. We are variations on sporty, arty, funny, clever and interesting, in varying degrees. We're not walking stereotypes, we're not friends because we giggle over cocktails and simper about each other's new handbags. We have shared values and we enjoy each other's company, it's that simple.

Maybe the author would stand a better chance of making friends with more women if she didn't look down on them so much.

It may come across like that but my comments, for example, come from experience. I had a best friend whose company and conversation I genuinely treasured, and we spent lots of time together doing all sorts of things, and I was very sorry the friendship ended. I also had lovely friendships at school. But as I've grown older it seems to have become more difficult.

I meet a lot of people through work and some I have things in common with, not least our line of work, but I've been frustrated by some talking down to me as a 'lower status woman' (in terms of my role) and patronising me, when I view and treat everyone as an equal. And this from people who I might otherwise like to be friends with.

Or my acquaintance group, who sometimes seem to treat a social situation almost as a 'speed dating' or networking kind of event, always looking for a new and more exciting person to speak to. It gets quite exhausting, having to find someone to talk to every few minutes. But they seem to thrive on it.

Meant to add that competition also seems to be a common feature in women's friendships/among women who spend time together. I really object to that and resent it.

These sorts of 'lifestyle' articles spend half their time inventing trends/expectations about how we are meant to live, and the other half of their time 'discovering' that these are spurious.
I read the piece thinking. 'FFS, can you really believe that you are doing anything other than playing around with tropes and cliches? Did you really spend any single second of your life thinking that this flummery is related to your reality, rather than to the opportunity to scrawl a few marketable column inches?'

I agree! While people can be horrible and nice people sometimes end up being treated badly, or friendless through no fault of their own, just women just sounds full of herself.
Also see 'I'm not like other girls/I have more male friends cuz I can't get on with all the girls'.

I say that as as neurodiverse woman who doesn't like chit chat... still got nice friends. Maybe because I'm truly interested in people and it's reciprocated?

I really, really don't think that's a women thing. Some people are, no doubt - some people are arses, female and male, and sometimes in groups that's amplified. But there are also women everywhere who are awesome and make great friends. I generally avoid the company of people who I find annoying, for whatever reason.

I feel sorry for the writer that it took her until her mid-40s to give up trying to find a female friendship group.

I let go of that shit in my 20s with no regrets whatsoever.

I see those photos of hen parties, baby showers and bottomless brunch and feel nothing. There is literally nothing appealing about any of that to me.

Exact same experience for me!

I always struggled with the shallow talks, often just having to listen about men and dating, and gossip about other people.
It only got worse when they started to get married and kids made everything unbearable.

I also hear a lot of female friendship group conversations at a yoga studio I go to, and it really is the most unspeakably inane, superficial and boring bollocks I have ever heard.

I honestly think even they must know it, but they feel they have to engage in it for some reason. Out of habit maybe.

I think this woman would do better if instead of questing after the weirdly reified notion of 'female friendship' she just did the things that she loved doing and met people along the way.
Go to book groups because you like books, go to Quakers because you are interested in religion, go to concerts because you like the music, walk your dog because you have to. Authentic freindships are byproducts of all these things.

Nothing appealing about any of that to me either, which is why my friendship groups don't do any of it.

Nah, friendship is sometimes (not always) what happens whilst you're busy doing something else, in company, for its own sake.

All the better is that some sort of joint endeavour.

And like people themselves, it comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes.