Celebrating friendship
A guest post by Aja Frost
"There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate." Linda Grayson
Want my hot take? Friendship can be just as rich, complex, and meaningful as romance. That’s an opinion my friend
and I both share, and it’s one of the reasons we founded : a newsletter that celebrates our friendship with each other and the women we love.It’s not a widely shared opinion, however.
When I was 21—a babe!—and regaling my mentor at the time with stories of all the lame men I was going on dates with, she shook her head and said, “Don’t be too picky, or you’ll wind up 35 with no mate. I have girlfriends in that situation, and they’re so lonely.”
Why are they lonely? I wanted to ask. If they have you, and other friends, do they need a mate? And why don’t you have the same reaction when I tell you about the friends I’ve failed to make because we turn out to be incompatible?
Since that conversation, I’ve found new mentors and some wonderful female friends. These relationships, like romantic ones, have ups and downs; for example, when Aliza told me she was pregnant, I was scared our nascent friendship would wither before it fully bloomed. I was delighted to find myself a year and a half later sitting in her son’s nursery while she got him ready for bed—braided into each other’s lives in a new way.
So, here are some books, shows, and movies that reflect this view of female friendship, portraying it in its nuanced, beautiful, messy glory.
Girls They Write Songs About by Carlene Bauer
This book opens in 1997 New York. Our two heroines, Rose and Charlotte, become friends while working at a music magazine. They’re fun, reckless, smart — and obsessed with each other in that way only younger women get to be. As the decades pass, Rose and Charlotte’s lives diverge, and their relationship inevitably changes.
Girls They Write Songs About gets female friendship so right. And if you love Manhattan, you’ll savor the ample and loving descriptions of the city.
Skate Kitchen (2018)
Eighteen-year-old Camille loves to skateboard, but after a bad skateboarding injury, her mom forbids her to do it. She resorts to sneaking out of the house, eventually falling in with a group of female skateboarders. They’re everything she seems not to be: confident, loud, a bit rowdy. And they aggressively take up space in the male-dominated world of skateboarding, encouraging each other to try new tricks, shrieking with pleasure when one of them lands a tricky one, and taking obvious pleasure in flirting with danger.
The posse’s skateboarding skills and camaraderie are mesmerizing. Director Crystal Moselle actually found her cast on the New York subway, saying, “I saw them with skateboards in their hands, and they looked interesting.”
Pen15 (Hulu)
I’ve laughed until I’ve cried watching this show, and I have a high bar for LOLs. It’s about two girls who are best friends navigating middle school. PEN15 is rife with uniquely 2001 references—think puka shell chokers, troll dolls, and Tamagotchis—and ultra-relatable moments of adolescence.
Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, the two leads, are also the creators and producers. Plus real-life best friends. As a result, the show feels incredibly honest, especially in its portrayal of their relationship.
Bonus recs:
If you, like me, can’t get enough of female friendship, here are some more of my favorites:
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett: a stunning memoir (by one of my favorite authors) about a life-defining friendship
Booksmart (2019): like Superbad for high school girls, this Olivia-Wilde-directed movie is hilarious and heartwarming
Insecure: at the risk of recommending something you’ve already seen, this five-season HBO show stars Molly and Issa, two Black best friends in their late twenties navigating LA
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I’d have to add Ghost World from 2001, with a young Scarlett Johansson. The central friendship is between two outsiders, Enid and Rebecca, and the challenge to their friendship when one of them no longer wants to be an outsider.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq6AOc0ATnU
That sort of challenge is often depicted in movies. For example, it’s almost exactly the situation between the two outsider sisters in 1987’s Housekeeping (based on Marilynne Robinson’s slender American classic), when one sister wants to be more like other people, make new friends, etc. rather than becoming more like their eccentric aunt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ask1brD5nLA
Also highly recommend Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend series, and if you don't feel like reading, the HBO miniseries adaptation is also fabulous.