I never thought of myself as one of those girls who got along with girls. But as the last days of my college career quickly burn out, I’m beginning to realize the joke’s on me.
Not only do I find myself often surrounded by other females, but these females are also some of the people I’m most proud to include in my selective list of best friends.
These are girls — women? Britney Spears really was onto something with that “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman” thing — who are strong, fun, badass humans who I could not imagine excluding from my social circle. These are the bitches who give me hope.
I’m not completely sure why we all grow up with this stigma that we’re more suited to have functional friendships with one sex over the other; the proverbial “guy’s girl,” or whatever, used to make sense to me. Now I just view it as petty bullshit used as an excuse to validate certain kinds of behavior.
Let me explain myself a bit more clearly: girls are framed as the “crazies,” the people who over-dramatize romance and whip out the claws the second their territory is breached. Here’s a well-kept secret: not all girls are like that.
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been guilty of avoiding lots of lady time in order to escape the soap opera story lines and make-up tutorials. Yes, some females care far more about getting attention than giving it, but this trait is unflatteringly displayed by both men and women, and not every single female boasts it.
I have girlfriends who can appreciate a good belch, don’t give a shit about fighting over boys and instead care about basic human decency and Nintendo 64 — obviously those two go hand in hand, right?
It’s not fair to say you prefer befriending boys because you’d rather hang out with “chill people,” people who will prefer beer pong over Truth or Dare and refrain from forcing you to share your deepest, darkest secrets.
This is not meant to be a lecture about equality of the sexes. We’ll save that for another day. This is about why females marginalize other females, stereotyping them as shallow and complicated just because of a second X chromosome.
Grouping all females into a single category is doing as much a disservice to yourself as it is to the perpetuation of pigeonholing typecasts that too often box everyone in, unconsciously forcing us to live and think according to arbitrary guidelines that we don’t always understand.
Plus, do you really think that a Y chromosome automatically means you’ll be served up a drama-free friendship? I can say from experience that boys are wont to whine and complain just as much as girls are.
So here I am, proclaiming to give peace a chance. Just kidding, but don’t ignore an opportunity for friendship just because someone has the wrong genitals between their legs. That’s not the part of them that’s going to give you advice about your own dumb romantic problems.