15 #LegendaryBesties for the International Day of Friendship

Think back to some of the moments that have defined your life: the joyful moments, the sorrowful, the desperate, the broke, the luxurious, the fun and the intimate. Chances are, you were with your best friend for a majority of those moments — or, at the very least, called her as soon as possible to talk about them.

It has been said that friends are the family you get to choose. A best friend can comfort you in ways that no one else can. For women, it is especially comforting to find another woman you can talk to, laugh with, and support who has the unique shared experience of being a woman in this world. It’s an exciting, often frustrating, and always interesting experience. Finding a best friend to share that experience with makes our lives even that much richer.

To celebrate International Friendship Day on July 30, Legendary Women is going to chat all about our favorite fictional representations of best friends — those friendships that inspire us to be better with our own friends, or that remind us to cherish the bonds we have held for decades — with everyone on Twitter (#LegendaryBesties, duh!) at 2pm EST. To start the conversation, I’ve started a list of 15 of the most iconic best friends in fiction. Making this list was hard, but luckily we have a chance to add to it this Saturday.

(Remember to share this with your best friend. You know she’ll love it).

• Thelma & Louise (Thelma and Louise): The ULTIMATE best friends. All you need to know is this: Louise is prepared to kill to protect Thelma, and they are both ready to die together rather than let the bastards bring them down. They are a united force against all the worst parts of the world, and they never leave each other’s side.

• Abbi & Iliana (Broad City): We couldn’t not include the most public and unabashedly-in-love-with-each-other best friends of today on this list. Abbi and Iliana (the real ones) have built a charming and weird show built on the purity and everlasting strength of their friendship. Above all partners, families, and jobs, Abbi and Iliana are there for each other, no matter what. They make sure the other one knows she’s hot when she is, and they look out for the other’s sexual and physical safety. They comfort each other after lost jobs, lost hookups, and “those nights” everyone has. Iliana and Abbi are the best representation today of what it means to be a best friend, and how much a best friend can brighten your life.

• Meredith & Cristina (Grey’s Anatomy): It’s amazing and refreshing that a show in which so much hype and publicity was created for a “McDreamy” romance found its biggest strength in its protagonist’s relationship with her best friend. All you really need to see to understand the power of their relationship is this exchange:

Every woman needs her best friend there to remind her of those facts she may have forgotten.

• Taystee & Poussey (Orange is the New Black): Prison is terrible and dehumanizing and brutal. Sometimes we can forget this while watching OITNB’s earlier seasons, where comedy is deftly mixed with drama. The awfulness of their conditions only makes Taystee and Poussey’s real, true friendship that much more of a treasure. These two help each other through the worst of times, and celebrate the good times. The end of season four only solidified their bond, as Taystee fights back when Poussey cannot.

• Lorelei & Rory (Gilmore Girls): While both Lorelei and her daughter Rory (short for, yes, Lorelei) have their respective other best friends on the show — Sookie is Lorelei’s business partner and klutzy bestie, and Lane is Rory’s rock’n’roll childhood pal — Lorelei and Rory really are each other’s best friend. It’s unusual, especially on TV, to see a mother-daughter relationship also be a best friend relationship, but it does happen. Their bond is stronger than anyone else’s and they complete each other’s whip-smart thoughts. These two women have many friends and boyfriends pass through their lives, but no one ever comes close to replicating the bond they have with each other.

• Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte (Sex and the City): I have had a variety of reactions to SATC, even to its core friendships. However, at the end of the day the show always manages to give you real moments of true and intimate friendship among these women just when you’re doubting the reasons you’re watching the show. But who can forget when Miranda calls the girls out on only talking about men (or when she calls Carrie out for cheating with Big)? Or when Carrie and Samantha find their ways to support Miranda at her mother’s funeral? Let’s not forget my favorite part of the show: the awesomeness of the girls constantly meeting up for brunch, lunch, and/or drinks. This is friendship at its most fun, and it is fun.

• Joan, Maya, Lynn & Toni (Girlfriends): While Sex and the City presented the girls as pretty much at the peak of their careers, with enough wealth to live as they want to in Manhattan, and with the only concern left being who they would marry, Girlfriends offers a much more relatable representation of adult friendships. The women each come from different backgrounds and have distinct personalities, but they find a way to work together and support each other while pursuing their personal and professional passions. On top of that, these girlfriends have to navigate being black women in America and they never shy away from discussing what that means for their dating life as well as their careers.

• Leslie Knope & Ann Perkins (Parks & Recreation): Every relationship Leslie has with anybody on Parks is guaranteed to be warm, generous and kind — especially on her part — but her friendship with Ann only rivals her relationship with her husband, Ben, in that Ann is there to support the hardest working woman in politics (well, maybe the second) who is always supporting others. Leslie needs backup too, and Ann is there no matter what. Remember when Ann and Ben created a Leslie Knope Emotional Support Task Force? That’s what best friends are for.

• Angela & Rayanne (My So-Called Life): There are so many great and interesting and unexpected (hello, Brian and Rickie) friendships on MSCL, but the bond between Angela and Rayanne is the inciting incident for everything that follows. Rayanne is alluring and thrilling to Angela, and Angela is stable and supportive to Rayanne. They are both fascinated with what the other is, and has, and this leads both to experience things they wouldn’t have previously. Their eventual schism is truly heartbreaking and is the best representation of the pain you feel when you are hurt by a best friend, or you do the hurting yourself.

• Natalie & Tootie (The Facts of Life): It was a show that had a lot of shakeups, going from a dozen young girls at a boarding school under Edna Garret’s watchful eye to just four young women running a house and a shop with Edna’s sister, Beverly Ann. Though Blair and Jo’s more adversarial friendship got a lot of attention, there was only one constant from pilot to finale — Tootie and Natalie. They supported each other through struggles with dating, sex, bullying, racism, drinking, drugs, late 70s hair, late 80’s hair, just all the trials of going from childhood to adulthood.

• Romy & Michele (Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion): If you have not seen this movie in a while, please, please go do so now. It’s easy to forget amidst the latex dresses, high hair-dos, and dance sequences that this film is a gem of comedy and friendship. Romy and Michele represent the best kinds of friends, the ones who are on the exact same odd plane of existence as you, and who encourage and match your every thought and action. If you find your Romy, or Michele, never let them go.

• Buffy & Willow (Buffy the Vampire Slayer): One of many things that make Buffy such a great character, person, and slayer is that she requires a team of close friends to get the job done. Buffy knows that you can’t go it alone, especially when up against the demons of Hell. Willow is ready and able to assist Buffy in whatever she needs, risking her safety frequently despite her fear, because she knows that even with Buffy’s fighting skills, her best friend needs her.

• Tia & Tamara (Sister, Sister): Just like Lorelei and Rory are both mother-daughter and best friends, Tia and Tamara are twin sisters who are also each other’s best friends. The real life twins (if you couldn’t tell) portray two girls who were separated at birth (!) and happen across each other as teenagers in a shopping mall. It’s amazing that despite missing each other’s formative years, now having different backgrounds and pretty opposite personalities they still “click” into place and understand each other perfectly.

• Rebecca & Paula (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend): Is this just another attempt to get people to watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend? Why, yes, yes it is. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong! The relationship between Rebecca and Paula — alternating between the bond of two friends and a surrogate mother and daughter — begins as a rivalry but by the end of the pilot episode the two are singing each other’s song. Their bond shows us the less admirable sides of friendship — namely, the potential codependency — but at the end of the day, these two women love each other and want the best for the other one. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is about the quest for happiness in life and in love and one of the necessary ingredients for that is a best friend there to support you, or to throw a rock through your window when you need a cover story. That’s just a fact.

• Dorothy, Blanche, Rose & Sophia (The Golden Girls): This quartet proved that you can maintain a thriving and wild friendship for your entire life. This show was remarkable in portraying older women (and in TV, that usually means older than 35) as sexually active, witty and wry. They weren’t confused biddies, they were having just as much fun as Carrie and company, although they probably made fewer mistakes.

Those were some of the best friends that came to mind when I thought of Legendary Besties, but I’m sure you’ve got at least ten more you can think of right now. So let us know! Tweet to legendarywomen tomorrow at 2pm EST with the hashtag #LegendaryBesties and we’ll start the conversation about what friendship means to us and how we feel about some of our favorite (or not-so-favorite?) fictional best friends. Until then — stay legendary, ladies.

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