Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

by Kayleen Schaefer

When I see my girlfriends, I don’t love them because of any trade of services I expect to get from them. I love them because they’re there.

“I never even thought of it,” she says. “I didn’t desire it. I concentrated on my teaching and wrote your dad letters. This was my way to support the effort in Vietnam. I had to be tough, and withstand anything; I couldn’t be sad, or unhappy. I was just busy.”

“made this new life, at least that’s what I thought we were doing, a life centered around my husband,” she says. “That’s what we did then. It may not have been true for everyone, but it was true for me.”

But her new career made it even harder for her to make friends with her neighbors. “I think it was more of the times than the women themselves,” she says, “but there was something there in that neighborhood that, you know, there was a lot of, ‘Who does she think she is, writing? What makes her think she can do this?’ There was a lack of support that I had to get back in my life.”

Critics have said this means that women didn’t rely on each other during this time, but “that’s just absurd,” according to Sandidge. Women were friends, but it’s hard to find proof for two reasons, both having to do with how marginalized women were.

men did the writing—so

But Sandidge says when you look closely at how the men writing these books and documents describe what women are saying and doing, you can see that they do have close relationships with each other.

even if women suspected they were friends, men told them that was impossible.

“I liked seeing my mom go out by herself,” my mom recalls.

When the women came over to her house, my mom remembers them talking and laughing around a card table set up in the living room. “She seemed relaxed,” my mom says.

not outrageous issues—but important issues,”

“Let’s go stand outside and get a look at him,” she said.

I must have failed whatever friendship test took place during our sleepover, since we never spoke at school after that.

“Um, Kayleen, could you go somewhere else?” she said. “I need to talk to my friends.”

Our general operating principle was that it’s fine, and expected, to knock other girls down.

Rush is not chill.

the whole event is basically a weeklong slog through a sauna the size of four hundred football fields while trying to look nice.

Our best friends, according to Hollywood, were only there to support us while we found love and let us go after that.

If I could make the fact that I was a woman disappear, then I wouldn’t have to deal with a professional world that I was pretty sure didn’t take women seriously.

neon sign over my head that said “girly girl.”

in a way that women who forced themselves to be nice when they really wanted to tell someone to go fuck themselves could thrill at.

“When you’re insecure about something, you can project that this person who’s not like you is somehow the enemy. Because if you can compartmentalize them that way, if you can make them that way, that validates who you are.”

you have to realize that everyone doesn’t celebrate your success.

believed that in order to be successful, and to not be penalized because of the fact that I was female, I had to stand on my own.

was just a fucking ball of grief and need, and I never felt judged for that, and I never felt like people were getting annoyed with me even though they likely were. I just felt really supported in a time in my life when I had no patience to be anything other than how I felt, and I’d never experienced that before.

Carmel talks a lot; I’m quieter, but I never felt like she didn’t hear or appreciate me.

We accepted each other and let each other exist, like I do with my family, but this felt different because it was a choice. “You were never trying to impose your moral code on me,” Carmel says. “You were only ever thinking about what’s best for me.” In a way that was natural and unforced, we meshed our lives together.

They were there every day, being supportive and warm, just so she could have someone to talk to about what was going on with her mom if she needed to.

I remember running around the L-shape, from the bedroom to the kitchen, overjoyed to be by myself there.

surprised me that it was considered noteworthy because all the girls in my sorority were very supportive and kind to each other,”

Mickey Rapkin’s

Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory,

Liane Moriarty’s novel Big Little Lies,

“It was kind of amazing to feel the interest—that’s what happens when women combine their powers,” Kidman told Vogue. “If I’d gone by myself to try and do it, it wouldn’t have worked.”

Respect, parity, and belief women could lead the country would fall in line when one of us was president. I thought it was all easy from here.

How anyone votes and what they believe is, in the end, personal.

Intersectional feminism asks white women to recognize that they have had it easier, that other, nonwhite women have been oppressed and discriminated against differently.

Waiting to Exhale,

“Friends are the people who let you be yourself—and never let you forget it.”

Louise, no matter what happens, I’m glad I came with you. —Thelma in Thelma & Louise

Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England.

Often it can feel easier to make a friendship a former friendship than to talk about what’s going on.

Jewelbots cofounder Sara Chipps

Our friends are not our second choices.

They are the first people we tell about any news, whether it’s good, terrible, or mundane.

They are the people we’re raising children with.

They are our advocates, who, no matter what, make us feel ...

They are the people who will struggle with us and who ...

are who we text when we...