“I’ve never wanted to be a mic more in my life”
“Just imagine he comes to pick you up for a date clad in that tux”
“I love women but that attire is definitely working for him”
I smile smugly as I silently read all the messages my friends sent on the group chat in response to a video of Harry Styles singing Adore You. Somehow, the never-ending to-do lists, bowed shoulders complementing the sleepy eyes all seem to fade away whenever I open my phone and see a text from my friends. The messages don’t evoke the clumsy, excited feeling a text from perhaps, a crush would, but rather a feeling of calm and familiarity.
As Sources Of Comfort And Familiarity
My women friends happen to be the repositories of all my cherished experiences.
Together, we’ve concocted our coming of age narratives, romanticising every bit of our being, processing heartbreaks together, and incessantly finding our way back to each other amidst worldly obligations and routine tirings.
As we’ve grown up together, I find that my girlfriends have truly aided the formation of a deep consciousness within me, that would’ve otherwise been lost. A huge aspect of the validation and awareness we seek from society is in fact somewhere fulfilled through conversations with our women friends.
It could be as trivial a thing as choosing a dress or as severe as leaving a job or a relationship. Women friendships help us navigate the internality of our existence, reiterating the validity of our emotions through the pressures of logic and responsibilities.
In a world that operates on a patriarchal setup, it’s very hard for women to detach themselves from the relational perceptions of the system. The endless nights of aimless conversations, the reassurance of a sister’s touch, and the mutual exploration of desires and epiphanies otherwise suppressed, all are ways of deriving some agency in a society where most women are expected to be a certain way.
‘Firsts’ With Friends
As women, we’ve never held any agency over our desire let alone our bodies. We’ve been shamed for expressing our sexualities, as a consequence of which we’ve been categorically unaware of how our bodies work, (with or without any relation to our desires) and how we must assert what we want.
Talking to my girlfriends was in fact the closest I’ve been to receive a comprehensive sex-ed class.
Even though we all were growing up with similar experiences, it was through vocalising our fears and fantasies, sharing information, questioning the misogynistic conditioning that we slowly grew to form our identities.
I remember the first time I ever developed a superficial crush was at a middle school Model United Nations Conference. In an alarmingly privileged set-up to where I was supposed to be debating real-world problems, my mind was distracted by someone else altogether. With immense courage I went up to my friend and expressed the apparent shame of my attraction, only to find that she felt the exact same way about the person in question.
Throughout the span of those three days, we laughed sheepishly, found comfort in our shared innocence and revelled in our ability to be so intimate with one another. Fast forward to the end of high school and the beginning of my University days, I still find that most of my questions about desire, awareness about one’s own body, and expression of individuality especially when it comes to dealing with romantic relationships are shared and answered by most of my women friends.
It was through such confessions replete with trust that conversations around topics like self-pleasure became easier. Growing up together with discrete exchanges of adult literature, ranting about their overt sexism while falling in love with their characters the rest of the time – together we shaped our individual visceral worlds open only to us in times of societal expectations and gender roles.
On Growth And Finding Agency
“I feel like the friends that we make specifically during our teenage years are the ones that play a huge role in shaping us the way we are because each one of us is changing and growing together at that time. They’re the first ones to know if there’s any new person in my life and spend hours analysing the person, fantasizing about the most random situations and discussing what will happen next. It’s like having a group of people who get happier about the excitement in your life than you are. A huge part of my confidence is also something I have derived from my friends. The way they hype me up and the way they’ll spend hours to convince me to post that one picture,” says Ishita Gupta, a second-year engineering student from IGDTUW.
According to a study on women’s sexuality, young women report having more frequent, comfortable, and open discussions about their desires and sexuality with their same-sex friends than with their mothers or any women present in their life.
In Indian families especially, there’s significant surveillance and management of a girl’s desires and sexuality, so much so that any hint at having a private inner life is seen as morally incorrect and clear deviance from the prototype of an ideal, pleasing woman.
Friends serve as advisers, referents, and informants, and they provide opportunities for young people to enact the sexual scripts that they learn. The functions of such discussions frequently entail providing support, advice, and validation. Within women friendships, however, the reins of one’s life and all its subtleties, including but not limited to relationships are given a multidimensional quality. The conversations acknowledge the internalised anti-feminist sentiments that a lot of women succumb to as they choose to be a part of conventional heterosexual set-ups.
There’s an active expression of “this is what I want”, “this is exactly how I feel” and “I will not settle for less” in my women friendships.
Mills and Boons; Harley Quinn novels; Sally Thorne and Wattpad fanfictions; Girl in Red, Clairo or even Alex Turner – women friendships are an outlet to the universalisation of our very hidden and inexplicable fantasies, desires and all other emotions deemed unfit for open discourse.
Beyond the conditioned ideas we’ve been fed all our lives about how women must compete with each other, a safe friendship is often a way to learn the intricacies of other surrounding relationships. women friends often bounce troubles and revelations off each other, ultimately reaching a level of understanding and self-awareness that is otherwise hard to find.
Such friendships allow for the perfect balance of seriousness and validation with the ease of letting the other person truly be themselves. There’s abundant space for vulnerability and just the right amount of understanding that even if life gets too busy, your girlfriend will be there to share an absurd fan edit of Harry Styles, or support you as you make a life-altering decision.