Zoë Strickland | Editor-in-Chief
“Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship” is a title that seemingly holds a lot of weight — it takes up a lot of physical space and uses words that denote heavy meaning. However, the title seems to be the only part of this novel that consistently does so. I had higher hopes for Kayleen Schaefer’s print debut.
One of my favorite parts about Schaefer’s book is that it relies on quotes in the same way it talks about friendship — every piece used from a book, article or person works together to support Schaefer’s encompassing claim that the cultivation of friendship should be as important, if not more important, as the cultivation of romantic relationships.
The stories about other women, namely Schaefer’s mother, provided some depth to how friendships have changed over time, and how they may look different to people of different ages. However, I had problems with the overall amount of representation in the book. Seemingly, most of the quotes and stories being offered were from middle-class white women. Though the insights added to what Schaefer was trying to say, including people from a variety of different races and classes would’ve presented a well-rounded look at how the dynamics of female friendship may change when presented with different struggles.
While “Text Me When You Get Home” had points that were relatable, I found that it often boxed-in readers by primarily showing only Schaefer’s viewpoint or promoting intangible ideas of friendship like the ones shown on TV. The book uses large amounts of external quotations, but the stories themselves are primarily centered around the author’s own experiences. As someone who couldn’t relate to a lot of Schaefer’s experiences — most notably of which is an entire chapter devoted to her joining a sorority and leaving it once she found a significant other — I immediately felt closed off from the narrative of the book.
Admittedly, I knew I wasn’t going to truly enjoy “Text Me When You Get Home” after I read part of the introduction. It proclaimed both that female friendships are superior to friendships between people of different gender identities, and that women who prefer to be friends with men do so because they feel threatened by other women. While I agree that this sometimes be the case, it fundamentally doesn’t align with the majority of my belief system.
Claims like these made it so I never fully felt comfortable with the narrative that was being presented. If the writer’s goal is to highlight the bond that exists in female friendships, one of the primary ways of conveying that bond shouldn’t be through the bashing of other types of relationships. Similarly, the binary way in which she refers to relationships immediately leaves out an entire facet of the way in which other people experience them.
“Text Me When You Get Home” starts out with a strong point that one of the larger ways to differentiate “female friendships” it that they oftentimes use more external ways of showing affection, like telling friends to “text me when you get home.” I was expecting this to be the basis of what would inevitably be a comprehensive look at how friendships have changed and progressed over time. While there was a little bit of discussion around that topic, Schaefer instead focused on personal anecdotes and recounting how female friendships have been shown in popular culture.
At face value, this book is good. The writing is strong, the narrative is fairly insightful and it’s obvious that the writer is passionate about what she’s writing about. However, the writer’s meager attempts at inclusivity fails to represent a full-fledged view of what modern female friendship means to people of all identities.
Contact the author at journaleditor@wou.edu
Photo by: Penguinrandomhouse.com
