Female friendship moving beyond BFF
As the median marriage age climbs, close relationships have endured and intensified
Best friendship is a sign of social aptitude in children, especially young girls. They wear it on their sleeves with charm bracelets, with secret codes and even — shh, don’t tell Mom! — with Instagram bios. To have a best friend at age10 is to forget who you are without that person, to be inseparable and almost indistinguishable.
Then come crushes and puberty, sex, maybe love, and still sometimes marriage. With each milestone, the label can begin to seem like a cute school-age relic.
If a best friend is someone whose hair you braided and whom you told about your first kiss, can she also be the woman who keeps the spare keys to your first studio apartment, lets you cry in her arms after a boss threatens to fire you or listens when you tell her, and only her, of a sexual encounter that left you with a bad feeling.
For some, the answer is a resounding yes. But others have replaced the one-size-fits-all designation with personalized titles to convey the magnitude of their closest relationships.
Stephie Grob Plante adapted the BFF abbreviation when she was in her early 20s to underscore the eternal quality of her relationship with her best friend, whom she met in preschool.
“‘Best friend’ gets thrown around a lot,” Grob Plante said. “It isn’t strong enough. It doesn’t carry the same weight as ‘brother’ or ‘sister.’ ” So she and her best friend became each other’s BFF!F, adding the exclamation point and another “F” for a particular emphasis.
Sometimes circumstances, rather than years of friendship, enhance the connections between women.
Kim Vandenberg, 34, a U.S. Olympic swimmer who won a bronze in the 800-metre freestyle relay at the 2008 Beijing Games, calls some of her teammates “soul sisters” because they feel like family.
“If one of us had a bad swim, we’d cry about it in the warm-down pool,” she said. “We were sisters. You’re away from your family, training for four to five hours a day. Even if we fought we’d get over it. Our friendship was more important.”
Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur, who founded the e-commerce platform Of a Kind, use “work wives” to emphasize that they are devoted to
“Referring to each other as ‘work wife’ gets at the blend of the professional and the personal — and the commitment.” ERICA CERULO OF A KIND CO-FOUNDER
one another.
“We’re friends who started a company and spend an inordinate amount of time together, and the nature of our relationship is really hard to put into words quickly,” Cerulo said. “Referring to each other as ‘work wife’ gets at the blend of the professional and the personal — and the commitment.”
Cerulo and Mazur are collecting stories about other female business partners for their book Work Wife, to be published in January 2019.
As the median age for marriage continues to climb, friendships between women have not only endured but also intensified. These alliances have borne comedic fruit, bolstered political campaigns and kept people alive.
They have also stood in for romantic partnerships during pivotal moments. On an episode of the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) reveals to her fellow surgical intern Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) that she is pregnant and has decided to have an abortion.
“The clinic has a policy,” Cristina tells Meredith. “They wouldn’t let me confirm my appointment unless I designated an emergency contact person . . . someone to be there just in case.” She gives Meredith’s name, she says, because “you’re my person.”
The founders of the website Go Fug Yourself, Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, use “person” for each other as an ode to the TV characters.
“That is one of my favourite female friendships ever featured on television,” Cocks said. “Those two knew each other inside and out, good and bad and ugly, and never wavered, and that’s what we are for each other also.”
Aminatou Sow, 32, a host of the podcast Call Your Girlfriend, uses “person,” too, independent of the Grey’s phenomenon. Her mother died a couple of years ago, and she isn’t close to any other relatives and is single.
“So for me, friendship holds such a central place of importance,” she said. “It’s always been a really big deal.”
Sow’s “people” are the beneficiaries for her 401(k) and life insurance (“Where it says ‘relationship’ on the form, there’s never a box for ‘friend,’” she said).
They have also, in recent months when she has been sick, been her hospital visitors.
“The hospital is always like, ‘Oh, are you two married?’ ‘Are you two dating?’ ” Sow said. “It’s like, ‘No, but this is my person.’ ”
Labelling something is powerful, said Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabes, who popularized the term “mean girls” and whose book inspired the film.
“It’s important for people to have a language because it’s a starting place for discussion,” she said.
In a way, these names are a nod to the codes of childhood: two little girls speaking in a language only they can understand.