For much of human history, said Erica Wagner in the FT, friendship has been regarded as a male preserve. "Perfect friendship," Aristotle wrote, "is the friendship of men who are good and alike in virtue." For the 17th century poet Margaret Cavendish, women's brains were "simply too weak" to support the "complex bonds" of friendship. In this "thought-provoking, open-hearted" cultural history, Tiffany Watt Smith explores how this situation has changed.
Nowadays, while men are castigated for their lack of emotional articulacy, female friendship is a "kind of cultural ideal". And by the late 20th century, being likeable and popular had become part of the conventional feminine paradigm, said Eleanor Halls in The Daily Telegraph. With this came various tropes: the "girl crush", the "popular" girl (a staple of 1990s romcoms), and the "bad friend", who "eschews sisterhood to pursue her individual ambition". All this, Watt Smith suggests, has created unrealistic expectations – meaning female friendship is "more fraught than ever".
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