

I didn’t want to know why female friendship films resonated with me so much growing up, because it was somehow just automatically embarrassing to be a fan of “chick flicks” at the time, even if you were a woman. I needed friendship in the form of Daisy Araujo ( Julia Roberts) or Jane DeLuca ( Whoopi Goldberg) to show me that love and companionship could exist outside of heteronormative boundaries, even if I didn’t know it yet. Growing up queer makes it difficult enough to make friends without also being deeply introverted, dreading the effort it takes to make new ones.

These films were, after all, the ones I mostly consumed in private, where I spent most of my early teens with few friends outside of my neighborhood ones who were about to outgrow me. Another film from my mom’s era centered on three best girlfriends, something about the moral of the story being that some friends are always there for you was a message I desperately needed. I did the same with Mystic Pizza, a production I came to love so much that my last vacation was to the Connecticut town where it takes place. RELATED: 10 Best Female Friendships In Movies of The 2010s And I watched it enough times that the script still acts as a warm blanket on cold nights. I sought out Boys on the Side knowing nothing more about it than that my mom liked the soundtrack, which was enough for me. As most baby gays and therefore old souls tend to do, I gravitated towards the possessions of my mother and grandmother as whatever went on between women always fascinated and comforted me. My mom had a CD copy of the soundtrack in our car growing up, but it was never a movie that she had a profound attachment to. I can’t even count the number of times I watched Boys on the Side as a teenager. Love or whatever doesn’t always keep so you find out what does, if you’re lucky.” It’s a sentiment that not only largely defines the genre of female friendship films but also acts in defense of real-life platonic love, a concept that many women-and ultimately queer men-come to know all too well. I’m not saying one sex is better than the other, I’m just saying like speaks to like. “You men know that because it’s the same for you.

“I don’t know what it is, but there’s something that goes on between women,” Robin ( Mary-Louise Parker) tells the court in defense of her newfound friend, Holly ( Drew Barrymore), in 1995’s Boys on the Side.
