SAWANT: How female friendships build community
Column: Sincerely Rue
After more than a year of counting down the days, last week, my friends and I finally got on our flights for our girls trip to Nashville, Tennessee.
The Airbnb we stayed at resembled a quaint cottage with light pink walls, flower vases, wooden furniture and frilly bed sheets. Shortly into our trip, our makeup products were scattered across the vanity counter and around the bathroom sink. Polaroid pictures of us laid in a circle around the coffee table. Our phones were discarded and forgotten (until we had to queue up more songs on Spotify). We all tried on different outfits for each other before a night out on the honky tonk-lined streets of Lower Broadway.
By the end of the trip, the thought of leaving each other and the city we had made so many new memories in together was bittersweet, a feeling comparable only to that of waking up from a dream you could live in forever.
I remember thinking how thankful I was for my friends.
Being a woman is undoubtedly complex and challenging, and the tribulations of the woman experience start right from the moment we are born. I could go on about what it means to be a girl in this male-dominated world, but that would be a whole other article of its own.
Instead, I would like to focus on an aspect that makes the womanhood experience, despite all the adversities and differences among us, one of the most meaningful journeys of our lifetimes: female friendships.
Friendships, in general, function much like the rivers and rocks of this world. Just as the elegant sweep of a river shapes rocks into beautiful canyons, so does the amity fostered with the people we are closest to. These relationships impact us in significant ways and shape the people we become.
Considering the fundamental importance of companionship, what makes female friendships so special is the unspoken mutual understanding that underscores most of the experiences we share with each other. Not only do our friendships help us form our individual personalities and tastes, but they also uplift and empower us.
In simpler words, girls get each other on a deeper level.
Throughout history, women have primarily been grouped with other women to fulfill societal roles. Whether gathering berries and weaving baskets, maintaining the home or working together to look after and raise their children, women have always had no choice but to have each other's company, while men were granted more independence. Still today, women form book clubs, start homemaking blogs and more with each other to form bonds and create communities.
In the professional world, women will often participate in empowerment groups and professional development organizations for women in the workplace. Programs that promote outward connection-making, relationship-building and overall camaraderie are rarely promoted among men because there has never been a need for them — not while our society inherently endorses men. Women, on the other hand, need that sense of community in a patriarchal society.
I feel that the expectations of what it means to be a woman have forced us together in both the past and the present. The oppression of women's bodies and minds faced by those who came before us and that we still face today pushes us closer together. Together, we must navigate a world where our basic safety, rights and freedoms are not guaranteed. This deeply rooted common thread can form tapestries of unique and complex bonds between different women.
For example, during my internship this summer, there was only one other intern who was also a woman on my team. We instantly clicked, if nothing else than for the sole fact that we were the only women there, but it was after that initial connection that the real friendship followed.
Everyone in the office began to associate us as always being together and would actually question us when we were not sitting with each other or both getting lunch. It was not that our identities merged but that our bond had transformed into something anyone could notice.
Even when I was in Tennessee with my friends, restaurant owners and bartenders seemed to gravitate toward us and ask how we all knew each other and what made us all friends in the first place. Our bond became something strangers could pick up on.
Considering that women are subject to such hardships, it is no surprise that we love to have our girls nights, go to the bathroom together on our night outs, do each others' makeup and do other little things that make us feel close together. The intrinsic connection between women can be traced all the way back to the beginnings of civilization. Our bonds are not just for fun — they are necessary for our well-being. It is a beautiful thing.
Rujuta Sawant is a Rutgers Business School senior majoring in business analytics and information technology and minoring in political science. Her column, "Sincerely Rue," runs on alternate Sundays.
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