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    Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship
    Unavailable
    Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship
    Unavailable
    Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship
    Audiobook6 hours

    Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

    Written by Kayleen Schaefer

    Narrated by Lauren Fortgang

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A personal and sociological examination--and ultimately a celebration--of the evolution of female friendship in pop culture and modern society

    "Text me when you get home." After joyful nights out together, female friends say this to one another as a way of cementing their love. It's about safety; but more than that, it's about solidarity.

    From Broad City to Big Little Lies to what women say about their own best friends, the stories we're telling about female friendship have changed. What used to be written off as infighting between mean girls or disposable relationships that would be tossed as soon as a guy came along are no longer described like that. Now, we're lifting up our female friendships to the same level as our other important relationships, saying they matter just as much as the bonds we have with our romantic partners, children, parents, or siblings.

    Journalist Kayleen Schaefer relays her journey of modern female friendship: from being a competitive teenager to trying to be one of the guys in the workplace to ultimately awakening to the power of female friendship and the soulmates, girl squads, and chosen families that come with it.

    Schaefer has put together a completely new sociological perspective on the way we see our friends today, one that includes interviews with dozens of other women across the country: historians, creators of the most iconic films and television shows about female friendship (and Galentine's Day!), celebrities, authors, and other experts. The end result is a validation of female friendship that's never existed before.

    Editor's Note

    International Women’s Day…

    An inspiring read for International Women’s Day, this book celebrates the depth and support of modern female friendships.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 6, 2018
    ISBN9780525527534
    Unavailable
    Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

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    Reviews for Text Me When You Get Home

    4/5

    49 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Best for: Women needing a nudge to tend to their friendships with other women.In a nutshell: Through memoir and research, author Kayleen Schaefer explores the special bond women share, and how those bonds can be tested by society.Worth quoting:“It can hurt to break up with a friend just as much, if not more, than to break up with a lover, but women don’t grieve these losses as publicly.”“Devoting ourselves to finding spouses, caring for children, or snagging a promotion is acceptable, productive behavior. Spending time strengthening out friendships, on the other hand, is seen more like a diversion.”Why I chose it:After moving back to London early last year, I’m simultaneously far away from some of my closest girlfriends and working on deepening new relationships with girlfriends I’d moved away from eight years ago. And trying to figure out how to do this in ways that make sense. Review:I haven’t ever had a squad of girlfriends. I wasn’t someone who shied away from having women friends (or girls as friends when I was kid); I just preferred more 1:1 time. At most, a group of three (including me) felt the best. I’ve never had long lists of close friends — or even not-so-close friends — I’ve just wanted to spend quality time with people who get me and who I get.Right now, I’m dealing with a lot of different issues related to friendship. In addition to leaving my hometown after high school, I’ve made four big moves in my life where I’ve physically left friendships. During each move, some friendships dissipate, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; friendships don’t need to last a lifetime. But at the same time, especially as I get older (40 next year), I recognize the value, power, and beauty of someone having known me at different stages of my life, and me having known them. In fact, one of my closest girlfriends and I had a chat maybe five years ago, when she was dealing with some challenges as a parent. She shared how important it was that she still had friends like me and another of her close friends, who have known her since before she was a mom. We knew what she was like before, and could help her see how she still was that same woman in many (but not all) ways.I’m also dealing with a friend who has, for lack of a better term, ghosted me. We’ve known each other for 16 years, and had stayed (what I thought was) good friends through her moving away, then me moving near her, then me moving away again, and now me being back in the same city. But as much as I’d thought and hoped that we’d pick up where we left off, I’ve not heard from her in months, and I don’t expect to. That’s hard.That’s all background to say that when I saw this book, I knew I needed it, because I needed not a reminder that friendships are important, but permission to focus on making sure the existing friendships I have are tended to. Of course not all friendships will stay the same, and not all will need — or deserve — the same level of attention. But if we want to keep those relationships up (and we should), we need to work at them. And not as an afterthought.Author Schaefer looks at the friendships girls and women have with each other through different stages of life. She focuses on how she treated female friendship first as a child in school (and examines the idea of ‘mean girls’), then as possible competition at the office, and then as a primary relationship in one’s life. She looks at the history of women supporting each other, and offers examples of times when women have supported their best friends through serious, trying times. She includes examples from pop culture as well as from people she knows.She makes a strong case that we need to be supporting people in their friendships. The relationships we have with our partners (if we have one) or our kids (if we have any) are important, but friendships should be up there as well, and deserve our time and energy. Of course, that could seem like just one more thing we have to learn to juggle, but I think it’s more like something that, if we make the time, will give us much more than it takes from us.The book obviously stirred up a lot in me, but I’m not sure it is a great book. I think it is good, and perhaps I was expecting less anecdata and memoir (which is on me, not the author), but it felt like some things were missing. There are also some areas where the author does demonstrate some ignorance (one section talks about women entering the workforce in the 50s which, I think she meant fairly well-off white women, because poor women and women of color have been working forever). In spite of that, I do think this is worth a read. I could write more, but I’m off to dinner with two of my girlfriends.Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:Pass to a Friend
    • 3/5
      Honestly, this book feels like an overgrown Buzzfeed article. It's all over the place and doesn't have any cohesive organization. But, at the same time, I feel like the book brought up some important points - friendship is IMPORTANT, and it should treated like it is important. So many people seem to be so dismissive about how deep and vital having healthy friendships is - and how much it hurts when those friends disappear from our lives, because society teaches us not to prioritize friendship once we're adults. It doesn't help that I began to read this book and then was dumped by my "best friend" two days later (not because I was reading this book, haha). So it was painful for me to get through the rest of this book, but in the end, I'm glad that I finished it (I debated about returning it to the library and not finishing it), because it showed me that maybe my former best friend wasn't such a good friend after all.
    • 3/5
      In my NYC days of the 70's, we said "call me/ring once when you get home". I enjoyed the book for the nostalgia it evoked in me but don't know if I agree with all Kayleen Schaefer's conclusions.
    • 1/5
      wow okay so.

      i thought this was going to be about how women trans women / femmes navigate dangerous spaces by supporting each other through technology. nah, i just misread the title.

      thats ok! sounds good anyways.

      instead, it was a story about female friendship. or, more accurately, a history of the author's various friendships and sororities with some pop culture references thrown in. it felt narrow in its scope, selective in its tone and exclusionary in its examples.

      saccharine sweet, straight af and dripping with heteronormativity, this was so boring and dry, even for its delightful references to older tv shows.

      full of excuses, brief one-lines about queerness, black lives matter movements and how trans women felt excluded from feminist movements.

      i kept waiting for a big reveal. for the build, the gradual peeling back of the curtain where i would get some great insight into how the world works and learn something about how (cis) women form friendships. and i never really did.

      also, i kept waiting for her to talk about asexual people and how platonic intimacy is so important in their lives. nah. altho she did use chosen family (a queer concept) in relation to some straight people? so, there's that.

      also, she mentioned #squadgoals with taylor swift, bella hadid and other famous people. and she mentions lena dunham like four separate times. it's peak white feminism and there are so many times when the author just completely ignores her privilege altogether.

      i wanted so much more richness. so many more layers. i didn't get any of that.

      i read this, so you don't have to.
    • 1/5
      It took me literally months, but I finished this book. What can I say? If you want a memoir mixed with a white-washed, heterocentric history of how female friendship has evolved throughout time in culture and Schaefer's life, then read this book. If you happen to be queer, like me, Schaefer's complete erasure of queerness is obnoxious at best. More often than not it's insulting. Her slight inclusion of women of color comes off as an attempt to not be targeted for excluding and does not feel genuine. I wanted to like this book because female friendship is extremely important to me and I love the fierce protectiveness that women have for one another, but this text is too scattered and exclusionary. It is, perhaps, a white feminist's reading of female friendship and that I could do without.
    • 4/5
      this was a very good audio book! it made me realize how imporant female friendships are and how girls and women have to stop fighting and competing with one another.
      it’s okay if your friend is your soulmate and your partner is not. we shouldn’t expect one person to be everything we need.
    • 4/5
      A mix of memoir and reporting. The stories of friendships are inspiring. Somehow, though, I just didn't find this book as relevatory/unusual as it was billed.

      1 person found this helpful