#06: Frond to the Ond
I've been holding on to this link for awhile, waiting for the right moment to discuss my own shortcomings as a friend, and thus being inclined to wonder, "do my friends even like me?" as this fascinating article from the NYT asks:
So it’s worth identifying who among the many people you encounter in your life are truly friends. Who makes time for you? Whose company enlivens, enriches and maybe even humbles you? Whom would you miss? Who would miss you? While there is no easy or agreed upon definition, what friendships have in common is that they shape us and create other dimensions through which to see the world.
According to Professor William Rawlins of Ohio University, there are three expectations for close friendship, held consistently regardless of age: someone to talk to, someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy. This piece from The Atlantic in October 2015 takes a sociological look at the ways our friendships change over time:
In a set of interviews he did in 1994 with middle-aged Americans about their friendships, Rawlins wrote that, “an almost tangible irony permeated these adults discussions of close or ‘real’ friendship.” They defined friendship as “being there” for each other, but reported that they rarely had time to spend with their most valued friends, whether because of circumstances, or through the age-old problem of good intentions and bad follow-through...
Alright, I know I'm leaning awfully heavily on my hot picks from the New Yorker this week, but I couldn't miss the opportunity to include a seminal thinkpiece about another seminal show about female friendship. I've returned to Emily Nussbaum's expansive essay about the "difficult women of Sex and the City" more times than I can count, not only because it's a great, engrossing read about one of my favorite shows of all time, (Of course it is. I'm so basic.) but also because it provides endless insight into modern womanhood:
As I’ve written elsewhere—and argued, often drunkenly, at cocktail parties—the four friends operated as near-allegorical figures, pegged to contemporary debates about women’s lives, mapped along three overlapping continuums. The first was emotional: Carrie and Charlotte were romantics; Miranda and Samantha were cynics. The second was ideological: Miranda and Carrie were second-wave feminists, who believed in egalitarianism; Charlotte and Samantha were third-wave feminists, focussed on exploiting the power of femininity, from opposing angles. The third concerned sex itself. At first, Miranda and Charlotte were prudes, while Samantha and Carrie were libertines.
And, a question that could have been lifted straight out of one of the iconic brunch convos on SATC– girls, would you wear these fake nipples?