Feminine Identities and Female Bonds

Abstract

This chapter enquires into ways that heterosexual feminine identities are articulated and negotiated through friendship and conversely, how ideas about female friendship are shaped by discourses of femininity. Among young and middle-aged urban, single and partnered women, conventional intimate dyads are gradually being supplanted by a new set of social dynamics characterised by group friendships. Women at leisure are now highly visible in single-sex groups in public metropolitan settings across Western societies: in pubs, clubs, cafes and bars. These public spaces have recently become important sites where young women are making claims for self-autonomy. Significantly, these trends are also being marked out by the media as anomalous and disturbing. Emergent forms of group female bonding among single career women are signifying women’s entrance into public space, a space once reserved for men. However, women unaccompanied by men in leisure contexts are being represented in various popular media representations as troubling. This chapter provides an analysis of British news reports of working-class single women who are condemned, in Western nations such as the United Kingdom, for binge drinking. It then provides a case study of the way shows like Sex and the City represent the friendships of 30-something singleton women as amoral, self-absorbed and needy. The idea of the ‘female crowd’ is then explored in order to trace the ambiguous relationship women have with postmodern associations of ‘elective’ associations and ‘liminal’ communities.