Marshmallow Posting 1: Mom hasn't called, but I had coffee with three It Girls; Bria, Emily, Kylee
It Girls on friendship in your 20s: "I know what you need, or at least I'll listen and try to figure it out."
I have a documented obsession with the It Girls of yore. Paris, Nicole, and Lindsay in the 2000s. Rihanna in the 2010s. These women, and women like them, were the original influencers. They yielded global attention and praise for their personas, fashion, and tabloid antics; so much so an entire generation—either knowingly or unknowingly—enabled them to define, move, and set culture during their respective peaks. That is the power of the It Girl.
According to my definition, OG It Girls (OGIGs) met the following criteria:
Cross-cultural relevance. People were fascinated by and aware of them, regardless of their primary passion. Someone could follow sport, fashion, or food, and still know of, and possibly even follow, Rihanna’s moves outside music, for example.
Authority within their respective niche. Whether they’re a fashion girl, pop girl, or scene girl, It Girls are amongst the top tier in their space.
General positive sentiment. People like them, generally. They may receive criticism, but the general feeling is: I like her.
Stop-the-world-moment. They’ve had a definitive moment during which the entire world was focused on and-or discussing them. Most OGIGs have several of these moments.
There are not many (or any?) “it girls” today who meet all of the criteria above. There is a case to be made for Zendaya and the Kardashian-Jenners being counted among the OGIG class, but they do not, indisputably, compare to the OGs. In the same way we’re realizing mega-influencers (those with hundreds of thousands to millions of followers) have reach, but not necessarily influence in all cases, I suspect the modern day It Girls are micro in nature, impacting the industries and communities they belong to, without having global, national, or even state or city-wide reach.
If that’s the case, I’m very interested to discern the qualities these women have in common. What is the criteria for being a Modern Day [Micro] It Girl (MDIG)? Going off little more than personal gumption, I think MDIGs have presence (standing out in rooms without trying), perspective (having clearly-defined thoughts on the world, culture, and self), and likability (being the kinds of people people want to be friends with).
This week’s Marshmallow Posting kicks off a new It Girl Anthro series in which I explore MDIGs and the qualities they possess by way of chit-chat over coffee.
It Girls on Friendship in your 20s
I recently wrote about realizing I had an unhealthy understanding of what friendship is (TLDR: I viewed friendship as an aesthetic or asset, rather than a relationship). That piece (linked here) resonated with many people, specifically young to young-ish, people who are entering the age where you realize a. There are perhaps too many people/relationships in your orbit to reasonably maintain, and b.Your definition of friendship is evolving. That was certainly true in my case. While I’d love to be the end-all be-all authority on friendship, I recognize I have more to learn than offer on that subject. So I invited three MDIGs—Bria, Emily, and Kylee—who I thought might have a perspective worth sharing.
We met at Sincerely, Tommy in Bed-Stuy to unpack friendship in your 20s on a bench made for conversation between four.
A few things you should know about this week’s It Girls:
Bria
24; from Chicago; lives in New York; Journalist; Scorpio
Emily
25; from Lansing, Michigan; moved to NY in June; Comms & PR; Pisces
Kylee
24; native New Yorker; lives in Crown Heights; Multimedia Producer; Pisces
Bria, Emile, and Kylee on diversifying your friend group...
“I made an effort earlier this summer, which I’m proud of myself for, to really work on diversifying my friend group,” says BRIA, who is Black. Raised in a predominantly white community, having attended a PWI in New York, she comments “It’s just natural to end up with white people as your friends, which is fine. I love the ones I've chosen. But it does get isolating. And I wanted to make a very decisive decision to make sure that my friend group represented me and my culture.”
Feeling a need to diversify a friend group can inspire unwarranted feelings of guilt. No friendship comes with an exclusivity deal—and if yours does: 🚩
As we get older, our values, interests, and platonic turn-ons change. The things we had in common with OG friends may not be as essential to the person we are today. Feeling a desire to seek out people that align with our new self is not only natural, but healthy; it prompts continued and accelerated growth into the person we’re becoming. Someone that is, perhaps, more interesting, modern, and whole than who we were. But the adoption of new friends can feel complicated when the you’re surrounded by current and former friends.
Like many twenty-somethings living in New York, KYLEE’s college friends also live in New York, which comes with its benefits and occasional drawbacks. “It's difficult to have a balance. Like, you guys have never done anything wrong to me, but it’s just not where I am anymore.”
On not wanting, but not needing connection (or friends)
EMILY moved to Brooklyn in June from Michigan, where most of her friends still live. While many moving to a new city anxiously seek out a new friends, she confesses, “I don't have like a huge drive to expand, even though…I think it's maybe because I'm paralyzed by the city and the amount of people in it and not really sure how to approach it, but I think I'm just so comfortable. We're so interconnected already with social media and the ability to FaceTime and do all these things that we had practice doing over COVID.”
So instead of calling friends one, two, and three for a Saturday vintage store tour (at which she is a bonafide professional), Emily goes solo and finds that is perfectly ok, but she admittedly does have a lingering interest to find meaningful connections:
“[When you move to a new city], so many people are like, oh, I know this person…I know this person, go talk to this person. And it's so lovely, but it's so hard to continue those into something meaningful. So that's definitely what I'm struggling with is, I know so many people, but just know them, you know?”
The difference between knowing and knowing is what separates friends from friends. Because we all have friends—people we like, recognize, and perhaps hang with on occasion—but friends, the people we trust, know, admire (and in some cases love) are not necessarily found, but grown.
That brought us to what Bria calls friend-dating:
In romantic dating, the moment I mentally move someone from the “person I’ve gone on dates with” box to “person I’m dating” file is somewhere around date six, when I can comfortably call that person without a reason to. To say hi. To hear their voice. To let them hear mine. In friendship, comfort is also crucial to that defining moment.
“You have to be persistent, which is annoying,” Bria says.
[The transition happens] when you don't need a big to-do around what you're going to be doing,” Emily adds, pointing to the difference between a plan with a two hour hard-stop, versus open-ended hangs that leave room for getting to know each other, pushing through the awkward downtime moments to ultimately find comfort with each other, without the pretense of a plan.
“It’s the comfortable silence,” Bria confirms. “I feel like when you’ve reached that, you're okay, we’re in. We’re locked in for good. But you're right when it's not like, oh, we're going to go to a group thing with all these people or let’s go get drinks, but just running errands…little things like that. Or just hanging out out of genuine convenience. I'm just like, oh, I'm near you and I want to see you, not that I have an explicit plan to reel you in.”
On quality over quantity:
There’s an unspoken pressure at times to be have as many friends as possible. But over time that pressure softens until we realize the number of friends you have doesn’t matter much if the quality isn’t there.
“I think definitely as I've gotten older, I've realized that it's just nice to have people who you really trust and really get along with and really enjoy their company,” Kylee says.
“I don't think that [the massive friend group'] exists to be honest,” Bria adds. “You might run into a bunch of people out and everyone gets along, but I don't know if that's a friend group if you can't all a hundred percent rely on each other independently.”
Reliability was a quality Bria, Kylee, and Emily agreed separates good friends from not-so-good friends. But also, just being able to share the seemingly insignificant things with that person.
“[Some friends and I] used to do like text updates on the smaller things and not just the bigger things,” says Emily. “Like, I just cleaned my room, I feel great.”
Over time, those small things might naturally evolve into small, but impactful actions…
“I feel like a friend, like you guys have said, are people that are there for the little things, the people that know how to cheer you up,” says Bria. “Like me and my roommates have a running [tradition]—that no one's ever said, we just do it—if someone's having a bad day, you buy them a slice of cake. That's what we do. And I love that. We didn't have to establish it as a thing. It's just, we all care for each other and know what cakes we like. So it's like, if you're having a shit day, I'm getting you red velvet…I can rely on that without having to ask for it. That's a really good friend and that's the type of friend I try to be. I know what you need, or at least I'll listen and try to do it or figure it out.”
On setting boundaries and letting go:
Like most things, friendships expire. But we tend to want to hold onto them longer than we should. Imagine letting a carton of milk (let’s pretend we drink animal milk) sit in your refrigerator months or years past its expiration—that’s horrendous. Hoarding expired friendships is more so; they don’t just smell, they damage. And there’s nothing cute about self-sabotage.
“I haven’t had an official friend breakup, but at the beginning of this year I had a friend distancing,” says Kylee. “For about three months, we didn’t talk. But I feel like all of my friend-distancings have been very natural otherwise. I don't have bad blood with anyone. We acknowledge that if we see each other on the street, we probably won't say let's hang out because that's super inauthentic.”
As a native New Yorker, Kylee is regularly bumping into former friends she knew way back when and having to navigate responding to catch-up invitations, an ancient ritual.
“I see people from my elementary school, I see people from high school, college. I always see people. And whenever someone says we should get drinks, sometimes I'm like, why would you say that? Because we're definitely not going to do that. Yeah. I don't know why I get so angry when they're like, we should hang out and I'm like, why would you lie? You could just say hi. I always say, I'll see you around because we're in my neighborhood right now. You look comfortable. You probably live here [too]. I will see you around.”
“That [run-in, ‘let’s grab drinks moment’'] speaks to the ‘I want to have as many friends as possible relationships' thing,” Bria adds. “It’s just a reflex to be like, we have to be friends, even if you don’t mean it”
“I feel like it's bringing it back to the It Girl thing,” says Emily. “The whole It Girl idea, in my head anyway, was the type of sweet, bubbly sorority girl, that would be like, oh my God, we should hang out. But the new It Girl, knows her boundaries.”
“Yeah. Oh my God. I love that. That's really fucking good. It's true,” says Kylee.
“I feel like you have to create those boundaries in today's age,” Emily continues. “The Paris Hiltons...they didn’t have all these social media connections. You weren't bombarded constantly having to maintain hundreds of friendships in-person and online. That's just ridiculous. So you have to create a sort of reality for yourself.”
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“the new It Girl knows her boundaries” is my new motto
Loved this piece and as a 27 year old, I'm definitely going through this examination of friendship. Especially loved this quote, "The difference between knowing and knowing is what separates friends from friends. Because we all have friends—people we like, recognize, and perhaps hang with on occasion—but friends, the people we trust, know, admire (and in some cases love) are not necessarily found, but grown." ❤️