By Hess Stinson
If you a bad girl and your friends bad too, that’s not a coincidence. It’s not uncommon for people to use their friends to boost their social capital and bragging rights, or to curate them in a way that gives others a litmus to measure how great they are in comparison.
Friendships, just like all relationships, are a dance of what you can get and what you can give. And certain people are prevented from fairly exploring that balance of give and take because they don’t have what society deems socially desirable.
It’s both under-acknowledged how important friendships are compared to romantic/sexual partnerships, and how similar they are as well. Just like in romantic relationships, desire politics influence our friendships in how we select, maintain, and think of our friends. What is desired is not only a matter of looks, but also “redeeming” qualities like intelligence or class.
Friendships are not accidental, nor are they a phenomenon of the human condition that is exempt from colorism, sizism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, and other societal ills. Our friendships mirror the aesthetics and personality traits we admire, which are typically aligned with what society tells us is valuable. Your friends are a reflection of your choices, and what influences your choices.
The baddie over there with the Brazilian hair
Turned up in the club, that’s my best friend
“Who you pick and why you pick them matters; our desires don’t arise in a vacuum…” says Michon Neal, author of Aro, Eros, Arrows (integrated non-monogamy). The dominant ideals and values have set the foundation for what we think are markers of sound character. More often than not, those ideals and values are oppressive, dehumanizing the very people that deserve equal or equitable compassion the most.
When people say, “I ain’t got no ugly friends,” it is sometimes a profession of seeing the beauty in those closest to them, but more often it’s a confession of how they have curated their friends based on social perceptions. Our perceptions are influenced by society, and the systems that uphold it, as much as they are our individual experiences, birthing what makes up our personal litmus of attraction.
Desirability is social, circumstantial, and environmental. Conventions hold that attractive appearances are able-bodied, light-skinned, slender and/or proportional in frame, and whatever other phenotypes are in-vogue.
Sometimes, friendships are publicly displayed in a pageant-like manner that indirectly solicits grading and judgment. As with all pageants, appearance makes for the lion’s share of what each participant is graded for. The pageantry of lookism involved in friendship is checked and balanced with “redeeming” qualities such intelligence, or novelty/uniqueness + relatability (because you have to make people feel that they are on the same spectrum of talent even when you are unique). Popularity and money, in lieu of attractiveness or kindness, can still garner people willing to be approximate to you under the label of friendship.
Carolyn Weisz, a researcher covering the dynamics of social relationships, found that social identity support is the foundation for which all relationships started by selection is settled. “Social identity support refers to perceived support for valued aspects of the self that are related to identification with social groups, categories, and roles,” Karen Karbo writes analyzing Weisz’ work for Psychology Today. “Our desire for identity support is so strong… We stick with people who support our social identity and withdraw from those who don’t.” This included friendships that are likened to “The Odd Couple,” their differences and the flexing of identities also subject to external forces and internal biases yet to be turned over.
Tell your friends, to get with my friends, and we can be friends
Neal illustrated how the reaction to attractiveness being a major factor in friendship prompts the relationship “to suffer from desirability politics – a combination of isty criteria that makes someone ‘fuckable’ or ‘worthy’ or ‘desirable’ enough to invest in them emotionally, physically, financially, and socially; the most deeply rooted integrated/interrelated ists are racism, ageism, lookism, heterosexism, ableism, classism, and misogynoir – rendering their love lives [all kinds of love, not just romantic] null and void…”
When we fail to audit how we select people to share the intimacy of a friendship with, we are leaving people who are consistently overlooked by society vulnerable to what can happen from lack of companionship. Not only can there be physiological consequences of lack of companionship, but it also has systemic consequences in terms of current operations and resistance.
It takes a village to push for and achieve liberation. When people of certain aesthetic or interpersonal characteristics are constantly left out of social groupings, their experiences and oppressions do not get brought into the fold of what needs to be dismantled. It leaves major issues for the ability to continue post abolition, and weakens in the integrity of our social political movements which are informed by friendships and groupings of people.
Neal points out the ironies: “…they call themselves communities, but still the discourse of revolution or even just in basic rights and accessibility is still rooted in desirability politics…” Without checking desirability politics, it keeps us in a cycle of repeating the pitfalls of society.
It’s inevitable that desire politics will affect our relationships, but we can start having transparent discussions about the foundation of our friendships, and the benefits of those friendships. We can look at the people that we don’t consider friends and see if there is a common appearance or characteristic of these people, and whether that pattern is inline with marginalized aesthetics and situations.
If you notice that all of your friends are college-educated, or can speak similarly to those who have experienced academia, it might be time to challenge elitism and the social situations that you put yourself in. If you find yourself with friends who have similar slender body types, it is time to challenge sizeism and how you perceive larger people.
Friendships have a major influence on one’s life. Because they are so entwined with your emotional and social stations, you should be selective in bestowing and investing with certain people. However, oppressive measures of worthiness pervert that selection more often than not.
Deconstructing desire politics could cause us to reassess how we curate and maintain friendships in a healthy way. Only then can we approach friendships with those of varying identities and experiences on more reciprocal and liberating terms.
Suggested Readings:
Sherronda J. Brown, “Romance is not the only type of Black love that matters.” Black Youth Project, 2018.
Hari Ziyad, “3 Reasons Dating, Attraction, and Desire Are Always Political.” Everyday Feminism, 2016.
Kennedy Christine, “How anti-Black colorism forces dark-skinned Black women to be nothing more than funny.” RaceBaitR, 2018.
Hess Stinson is a writer + community organizer based in Baltimore. She’s also a co-host of you got me fucked up podcasts through Roaring Gold and a parent educator through World on my Shoulders. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter (under Hess Love) responding to social topics through a Womanist/Black Feminist interpretation.
