The 'Toxic Mom Group' is Proof: The Female Frenemy Obsession is Following Us Into Middle Age

I grew up on female frenemy stories. There was Gossip Girl’s Blair and Serena, One Tree Hill’s Peyton and Brooke, Laguna Beach’s Lauren and Kristin (and eventually Lauren and Heidi, IYKYK). 

Pitting women against one another is the patriarchy’s favorite tool, yet women devour the “fraught female friendship” trope with a special kind of glee (and listen — I’m not above this myself!). 

That’s why I’m not surprised at all by the virality of the article Ashley French (better known as Ashley Tisdale) wrote. It’s the intersection of juicy celeb gossip and “hey, what a perfect opportunity to pit women against one another”, two things we love on a cultural level.

But the thing that is so striking to me about the whole “toxic friend group” debacle is that while my fellow millennial women and I have grown up, the frenemy obsession hasn’t evolved much. We still love to pick sides and dig into the details and assign the “mean girl” label. If reactions to this story are any indication, we’re not shaking the frenemy obsession anytime soon. 

Why does this matter? Well, because female friendships deserve better PR. They aren’t just nice to have, they actually bring so many important health benefits. We’ve covered these before, but today I want to talk about how we would much rather fixate on the nasty side of female friendships rather than the wonderful side. 

I’ve never seen any dissection of male friendships, certainly not on the level of what we see around “toxic” female friendships. So what gives?

The issue here isn’t the toxic mom group itself. Friendships aren’t perfect, and it’s normal to move in and out of groups. It’s the fact that this “toxic mom group” story, and so many others, captivate us on such a massive level. And even though we are grown women, it all feels, as French puts it herself, very high school.

We’ve grown and evolved — yet the world won’t let us outgrow the female frenemy trope.