Friends

I didn't really have many female friends till junior high.  My closest friend for most of elementary school was a very geeky, very adorable guy.  My other close friends were guys.  It wasn't till fifth grade that I actually made my first female friend and it was somewhat novel, because she was not at all like most of the girls I knew up until this point.  She didn't care if her clothes got wet and muddy playing dodge ball, she might have a crush on a boy but that crush wasn't going to rule her life, and she was completely into math and computers and science (which I wasn't, but I found that different and exciting).

Looking back, the girls at my elementary school (at least the ones I had contact with) were walking female stereotypes and I loathed them for it.  Granted, I was privileged and for half of elementary school went to a private school, an exceedingly conservative private school (though I didn't know that at the time).

When I went to junior high I discovered that, contrary to my beliefs, not all girls were like the ones I knew.  I feel in with a group of four other girls who were some of the only liberal people at the school.  We talked about classes and sports and more importantly for me, not about makeup and clothes and boys (though we talked about boys some of the time).  I think that's the first time that I discovered that girls can be just regular average people, with concerns larger than: what am I going to wear tomorrow, and I've had mainly female friends ever since.

And that's what I look for nowadays in a friend, a person.  A person who doesn't need to use fancy clothing as a shield to hide who they actually are, but instead dresses in a way that reflects their personality.

PS. I realize that this post reads as horribly judgmental.  Maybe fashionable clothes (as dictated by Cosmo and other magazines) really do reflect who a person is, but I think my point is, if that is the case then I probably won't want to be their friend.