Polly Vernon
LAST WEEK, A NEW verb was introduced to the Urban Dictionary. To ‘Meghan Markle’ someone denotes the ditching of a friend who has stopped serving your purposes. While this might sound like a vicious, unsubstantiated slight upon the character of the heavily pregnant duchess – I’m not sure it necessarily is. I myself have a long, proud history of behaviour the Urban Dictionary would deem Markle’esque. I’ve walked away from a lot of people – almost always women – with whom I’d once been close. I have dropped, ghosted, tactically fizzled and strategically distanced. The corpses of former friendships litter the ditches on my path through life like roadkill.
The sanctity of female friendship is a… no, actually, it’s the central tenet of contemporary, everyday feminism; the feminism of Instagram quotes, T-shirt slogans, squad goals and teen queen Netflix Originals. You’re supposed to always rely on your girls, right? To be tethered tightly to them by the struggles of shared female experience. By period pain, the gender pay gap, heartbreak and hangovers; slut-shaming, mansplaining, white male privilege and how much more women’s razors cost.
Because: they are there for you – and you, for them, no? We should remain slavishly, unquestioningly, endlessly devoted to our female friends; to do anything else speaks mad, bad volumes about our souls. Renounce a girlfriend and risk ending up like series one Fleabag : with her dead and you filling the void she left with empty sexual encounters. Renounce two and people will start whispering: ‘Well, she’s not exactly a girl’s girl, is she…?’ behind your back (NB: this is worse).
Ah, but it isn’t that simple, is it? Women, being human, are as flawed and preposterous as any other example of our species. As complicated, jealous, needy and tricksy, as funny, silly, hypocritical and calculating, as damaged and potentially damaging. Some of us are fab, but some of us are awful – or perhaps just awful in combination with another one of us. Chromosomes don’t guarantee that you’re a good person, nor do they automatically make you a good friend.
It can take time to realise that the woman you initially considered an invaluable mate isn’t one, after all; particularly when an ultra-romantic, frantically fetishised notion of female friendship prevails. Years, perhaps, to recognise that your dynamic is skewed, that your values don’t match, that what started off as cheering support has ended up feeling like unrelenting dependence. But once you have; once the blinkers have slipped, the Kool-aid’s lost its fizz, and no amount of sisterly hashtags can convince you to endure another catch-up cocktail with Former Lady Friend X… What choice, then, but to Meghan Markle (or, if you prefer, Polly Vernon) her?