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lenny3 's review for:
Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship
by Kayleen Schaefer
2.5. maybe
Text me when you get home takes an anecdotal, almost memoir-esque approach to the exploration of female friendships, with varying levels of success. Much like a series of short-stories or essays, there are parts that resonate and hit their mark, and others that highlight the blinders of privilege (this reads from a very white-cis-hetero-normative, narrow perspective).
If your feminism isn’t intersectional, is it feminism?
Without being specifically stated, it feels like the premise was to evaluate, critique and attempt to overcome the impacts of both systemic and internalised misogyny, however, it just doesn’t get there. It instead became a superficial evaluation of pop-culture references. These references and discussion of the way female friendships have been portrayed in the media over time could have been a beautiful catalyst for discussing the impacts of the patriarchy, identifying and taking ownership of internalised biases and learned behaviours. Instead, they were just quipy stories. Some that do make you consider your own relationships and girl gangs, but not in the analytical, inclusive way I think is expected in this time.
Using the title alone as an example, the concept of “text me when you get home” has so many layers that can be unpacked. Unfortunately Schaefer reduces it to simply the idea that it is a way of woman saying “I love you”, but doesn’t take the opportunity to state why we use that particular phrase as an expression of our love.
Text me when you get home= I love you and want to make sure you get home safe> The world is not safe, especially for female identifying/non-binary people> why is the world not safe> Rape culture and rampant, overwhelming violence against woman> The even more horrific connotations of this for those with less privilege> ……. Delving deeper and deeper. You can continue to unpack the deeper implications of how, and more importantly why, those 6 words became such a integral part of our vernacular.
This book was published in 2018 – we can, and need to, do better.
Text me when you get home takes an anecdotal, almost memoir-esque approach to the exploration of female friendships, with varying levels of success. Much like a series of short-stories or essays, there are parts that resonate and hit their mark, and others that highlight the blinders of privilege (this reads from a very white-cis-hetero-normative, narrow perspective).
If your feminism isn’t intersectional, is it feminism?
Without being specifically stated, it feels like the premise was to evaluate, critique and attempt to overcome the impacts of both systemic and internalised misogyny, however, it just doesn’t get there. It instead became a superficial evaluation of pop-culture references. These references and discussion of the way female friendships have been portrayed in the media over time could have been a beautiful catalyst for discussing the impacts of the patriarchy, identifying and taking ownership of internalised biases and learned behaviours. Instead, they were just quipy stories. Some that do make you consider your own relationships and girl gangs, but not in the analytical, inclusive way I think is expected in this time.
Using the title alone as an example, the concept of “text me when you get home” has so many layers that can be unpacked. Unfortunately Schaefer reduces it to simply the idea that it is a way of woman saying “I love you”, but doesn’t take the opportunity to state why we use that particular phrase as an expression of our love.
Text me when you get home= I love you and want to make sure you get home safe> The world is not safe, especially for female identifying/non-binary people> why is the world not safe> Rape culture and rampant, overwhelming violence against woman> The even more horrific connotations of this for those with less privilege> ……. Delving deeper and deeper. You can continue to unpack the deeper implications of how, and more importantly why, those 6 words became such a integral part of our vernacular.
This book was published in 2018 – we can, and need to, do better.