Silver Screens and Binary Stars

She’s beautiful—that’s undeniable. She makes me laugh. We joke maybe a little too often about having kids together, and next year we plan to adopt three fish named Chester, Alan, and Arthur after our excellently mustachioed 21st president.

Finding a BFF, as I might say if this were 2008 and I still called Taylor Swift “my favorite band,” has been one of the most grounding forces of my sophomore year. Having a person who will call you continuously when you’re falling apart, who will order Domino’s with you when you feel you can’t study anymore, who will sit talking with you in the dining hall long after it closes about everything from God to the middle names of presidents, is a beautiful thing.

To portray the oddity and intensity of female friendship is a daunting task, which is why much of our media chooses to take the easy way out. Cartoonist Alison Bechdel created the eponymous Bechdel Test, which asks of all works a simple question: whether two women in a piece of media talk to each other about something other than a man at any point. Too much of what we consume fails this test, reducing female characters to flat silhouettes that revolve around their male leads.

The obvious viewer counterweight to these wanting types of portrayal comes in the form of female friendships like the ones I’ve experienced in my own life: nuanced, complicated relationships that are given equal—if not greater—weight than romantic relationships. Women who can rely on each other and support one another through the darkest and most confusing moments in their respective lives. To portray this symbiosis is unquestionably difficult, but successful depictions provide a necessary look into the complex world of relationships between women.

It’s no wonder then that Abbi and Ilana of “Broad City” have become pop-cultural staples of our current climate. Occasionally set up as a dichotomy, these two function more as a continuously orbiting binary—irrevocably, inextricably tied to one another and constantly in each other’s orbit. They play off one another, Abbi keeping Ilana at least somewhat stable and Ilana pushing Abbi out of her comfort zone. Their existence is tandem, entangled, and somehow haphazardly beautiful.

For much of my life, I saw relationships with men as inherently imbued with a value impossible to achieve with people who weren’t men. I was always jealous of friends who said, “I just get along with guys better—there’s so much less drama.” This easy camaraderie with men seemed cool, interesting, and desirable throughout my middle school and high school years. And when I realized that I might like girls, I responded by convincing myself that I had to end up with a man, that it somehow meant more.

And then I started to consume media that was different. There was “Jessica Jones,” with its central relationship being a female friendship. There was “Gilmore Girls,” aptly titled given its focus on mother, daughter, and a constant cast of supportive friends. And of course we have Abbi and Ilana, the dynamic duo that’s dominating modern television.

Sometimes on rough afternoons, after trying weekends or stressful nights, my BFF and I will sit together in the basement of Lamont or on her bed and watch “Broad City.” Between us, there’s no clear Abbi, no clear Ilana. While we can’t be divided in terms of this iconic comedy dichotomy, the strength of the “Broad City” friendship, of the Abbi and Ilana entanglement, feels intimately familiar.

In the season finale of “Jessica Jones,” it is Trish, Jessica’s best friend, whom Jessica saves. Throughout the series, though, the roles seem to be reversed, with Trish constantly looking out for Jessica, supporting her through addiction and trauma and the survival of abuse. Through positive and negative relationships, this cycle of support is the backbone of the show. Comfort and consistency are the things of solid friendship, free of the pressures to look good, to put on a persona, to put out. Friendships can exist independent of expectations.