The Importance of Females

To have a friend and be a friend Is what makes life worthwhile.
Unknown

The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.
Hubert H. Humphrey, Jr.

A friend is one who walks in when others walk out.
Walter Winchill

A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.
Unknown

Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.
Ed Cunningham

Louise Bernikow:

Female friendships that work are relationships in which women help each other to belong to themselves.

A quick glance at these quotes and you can once again guess what the topic of the day is.

You got it: Girlfriends.

Misery loves nothing more than company, so the old saying goes, so when you and some well loved girlfriends are going through this time together, misery can be a little less, well, miserable.

If you Google the following phrase: The Importance of Having Female Friendships, you will get 25,400,000 results to click onto. If you change one word – Female to Male – you will get 16,600,000 choices. So, obviously female friendships have garnered more of the written word and areas of study than the male friendship.

Interesting, no?

Many of the pieces I clicked onto were either blogs or interviews with women who have espoused the wonderful experiences they have had with their female friends over their lifetimes. A few were actual clinical studies that showed the physical and mental benefits of having a strong female presence in one’s life. And even a few were reports from Clinical Psychologists on the reasons why it may be detrimental to have close female associations. I’m betting that those were written by disgruntled clinicians and that they were male.

Clearly, I am going to accentuate the positive.

From the time we are little girls, we have been drawn to one another by shared and common interests: toys, dolls, role playing. Many studies have been done over the years that show the basic differences between small children and how they play. Little girls tend to play together, having tea parties, dressing their Barbie dolls, etc, and they interact with one another verbally and socially during these times. Boys typically tend to play side by side, pushing toy trucks along the carpet, and generally making vromm-vroom noises, but not actually playing with one another, just next to one another.

Girls tend to be more verbal (no, really?!) than boys and they tend to express their feelings in more emotional, yet verbal, ways. As we grow, this doesn’t change much. Oh, the teenage years may produce some girls who are stricken dumb around parents and authority figure for angst reasons, but the pattern that was forged in childhood typically remains. As teenagers, girls tend to gravitate towards others like them who are experiencing the same things they are: first loves, periods, pimples, celebrity crushes.

I colleges, Sororities thrive because they give a physical and emotional safe haven to girls who are far from home experiencing single life for the first time without the benefit of a parental shoulder to lean on. College can be all things wonderful and awful. Having your sisters around to help you navigate through the time is considered by many the most beneficial part of the college experience.

Now, adult female friendships are the ones that are most near and dear to my heart as a writer and as a woman. I grew up with no strong female role models, no sisters, and no real, lasting friends. When I write, I always have at least one relationship in the work that is a close sister or best friend.  I have the joy and the advantage of creating just the kind of relationships I wished I’d had growing up. It’s important for women to be able to trust someone so much that their darkest fears will not be denigrated, their silliest moments will not be made fun of, and their saddest times will be empathetically shared.

As women, we are typically the caregiving, boo-boo kissing, meal making, and emotional rocks families are constructed on. These facets, while important in the family dynamic, are equally as vital in our female friendships. Women are, first and foremost, Women. We have the shared experiences of our gender that men do not have. They don’t have periods, give birth, own breasts. Only another woman can sympathize truthfully when you tell her about cramps. Men will never know this, nor experience what a wonder it is to be a woman. And what a pain at can be at times, too, figuratively and literally. The capacity to share like experiences is an amazing gift, because it makes us better people overall.

Here’s my list of why Girlfriends are important no matter what age you are:

1.     There’s always one girl (woman) in the group who is up on the latest products to the hit the market, the juiciest new gossip, the most recent recap of a favorite, but missed, tv show.

2.     A true girlfriend will tell you TRUTHFULLY the answer to  “Do I look fat in this?”

3.     A girlfriend will never let you be seen in pubic with: spinach between your teeth, toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe, see through pants that aren’t supposed to be, bad hair, smudged eyeliner and a run in your panty hose.

4.     A true girlfriend always has a shoulder to cry and lean on, an ear to listen with, an opinion to offer when asked, and a tampon when needed most.

5.     A true girlfriend will answer the question “What did I do that made him leave me,” with the response “Nothing, It’s all him. He’s just a jerk. You’re better off without him,” and mean it with all her heart and soul.

6.     Your true friends are always up to hit the town, fly off somewhere for a weekend getaway or just stay in and watch reruns of True Blood even if it is a Saturday night.

7.     Your true female friends will stick by you when your moods erupt, when your weight balloons, when you cry at nothing, and when you are up at 3 am changing the flash-soaked sheets. And they will laugh about it with you.

8.     Your truest friend will share whatever info she has learned in order to make your life easier and better during hard times. And she will be the one looking for that info to help you without the need for you to ever ask.

9.     When tragedy strikes, your true girlfriends will fly to your side and never leave until you ask them to.

From Sex and the City, to The Golden Girls, from Bridesmaids, to Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, and even Thelma and Louse, the power of female friendships has been popular in the commercial media, and made the film industry a fortune in revenue. But even in print, the friendship between Elizabeth Bennet and Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice, the women of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café, and even the beautifully written The Secret Life of Bees all have shown the power of what females can do when they bond together as allies, friends, sisters and most important, women.

Call your sister or best friend(s) today and thank them. Tell them that you love them, and makes plan to get together.

Female friendship is a gift you give yourself that will last forever.