Text Me When You Get Home

"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 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 tells her own story of realizing what other women could mean to her as she moved through a 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 now, one that's drawn not only from her own story but from 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. A validation of female friendship unlike any that's ever existed before, Text Me When You Get Home is a mix of historical research, the author's own personal experience, and conversations about friendships with women across the country. Everything Schaefer uncovers reveals that these ties are making us, both as individuals and as society as a whole, stronger than ever before.