10 Female Friendships From Television That Show How to Be a True Bestie
There’s nothing better than hanging out with your best friends, turning on the television, and seeing fully formed female friendships represented and playing out right before your eyes. Television has been host to so many BFFs over the years, and the most iconic have made us laugh, cry, and taught us how to be a better friend to our real life besties. (If we don’t learn it on TV, where will we learn it?). Because you never need a moment to celebrate that person (or people!) who is always there for you, we’re rounding up some of television’s greatest female best friends of the past 20 years and the lessons they taught us.
1/10Flaca & Maritza, Orange Is the New Black
Flaritza may be relatively recent besties, in the grand scheme of things — I’m not exactly sure how long they’ve both been at Litchfield, but they met and became best friends while there. But duration of friendship makes no difference when it comes to these two. Flaca and Maritza (played by real-life actual friends Jackie Cruz and Diane Guerrero) stick together through everything, help each other through tough times, and also manage to have fun together, too (even during a prison riot). What are they — and we — going to do if they’re really at separate prisons during season six!?
2/10Spencer, Aria, Emily, & Hanna (and sometimes Alison), Pretty Little Liars
Is there any bigger test to a friendship that being relentlessly stalked by an anonymous cyber-bully who tries to rip your group apart for years upon years? Not in Rosewood, Pennsylvania. The four main Pretty Little Liars stuck together through it all (a few “Aria is ‘A’” hiccups notwithstanding) and came out stronger on the other end of all the ‘A’ torture. Now that’s inspiring friendship. Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna even let their once-bestie/mean-queen-bee Alison back into the fold, eventually. The real ship of this show worth shipping? The Liars themselves.
3/10Leslie & Ann, Parks and Recreation
Don’t we all want a best friend who will express her undying devotion and affection for us with witty and sometimes intensely hyperbolic compliments? Well, Ann Perkins was lucky enough to find that best friend in Leslie Knope. Their friendship is truly the cunning, pliable, beautiful, talented, brilliant starfish ox sun goddess of friendships. Let this relationship be a reminder to us all to shower the ones we love with unique compliments whenever we can.
4/10Jess & Cece, New Girl
Jess Day and Cece Parekh have been best friends since childhood, through thick and thin. They support each other, take care of each other, and when the time calls for it, aren’t afraid to get real and spew some tough truths with each other. All great qualities in a best friendship, and a great example for the rest of us that best friends don’t always have to see eye-to-eye on everything — they just have to have each other’s backs. Plus, how charming is it that Jess and Cece just seem to get each other (and each other’s quirks) on like, a molecular level?
5/10Taystee & Poussey, Orange is the New Black
BRB, I’m still crying over these two, and they were separated by Poussey’s untimely death a full season ago. Much like Flaca and Maritza, Taystee and Poussey were often each other’s lifeline at Litchfield — making it all the more heartbreaking that one half of the dynamic duo is gone. They kept each other afloat, cared deeply for each other, and could get the other one to crack up with a well-timed “Amanda!” or “Mackenzie!” The glimpse we got last season of their first-ever meeting was perfection. It’s not fair that Taystee now has to live in a world without her best friend, and as season five showed us, she’s channeling her grief into trying to get justice for Poussey. BFF means forever — even in death.
6/10Blair & Serena, Gossip Girl
Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen had their fair share of fights — who doesn’t, especially when you have the deep history B and S do? — but in the end, they always came back to their default best friend setting. As Gossip Girl herself (or himself, considering how the show ended) once said, “Serena and Blair? They do besties better than anyone.” It’s true: when these two Upper East Siders were on, they were so on, and no one has ever had more fun than they did. May their friendship go down in history in some fabulous couture!
7/10Jane & Lina, Jane the Virgin
There’s nothing Jane and her childhood best friend Lina (Diane Guerrero, again, showing off some of her BFF skills) can’t get through if they can just find a bathroom floor to sit on and hash it out for hours upon hours. Would we prefer not to sit on a public bathroom floor? Sure, but if our best friends needed us to, we totally would — just like Lina and Jane do for each other. TV besties: convincing us to go where we’ve never gone before!
8/10Cristina & Meredith, Grey’s Anatomy
If there’s any pair on this list we’d most like to let loose with, it’s these two. Funnily enough, they’re also the pair we’d trust to do major, life-saving surgery on us. We doubt either Cristina Yang or Meredith Grey went into their surgical internship looking for a new friend, which just goes to show: you never know where or when you might meet the friend you need. These doctor besties also gave us a whole new way to express BFFdom when called upon: “You’re my person.” I’m not crying, you’re crying!
9/10Brittany & Santana, Glee
Santana and Brittany’s friendship on Glee wasn’t always something to emulate — Santana was occasionally cruel to Brittany. But it later became clear that Santana was burying her feelings for her BFF underneath a string of flings and hostility. Once Santana came to accept herself, the duo’s friendship — and later, relationship — really hit its stride. Despite a few bumps along the road, the two gleeful cheerleaders ended the series as a happily married couple. They literally married their best friend. And we all learned that your best friend will always accept you for who you are (so you shouldn’t be afraid to show them).
10/10Betty & Veronica, Riverdale
B&V are both the oldest set of best friends on this list and one of the newest. Betty and Veronica have been best friends (and occasional romantic rivals) in comics for decades, and they’ve recently been brought to life by Lili Reinhart and Camila Mendes on the CW’s [Riverdale](http://www.teenvogue.com/tag/riverdale. On the show, the friendship between the girls is new — but from pretty much the moment Veronica rolled into Riverdale, it was clear that she and Betty were meant to be BFF. They’re super different, and have already had the awkward misfortune of being into the same guy at the same time (though the show doesn’t seem to be going the traditional B, V, and A love triangle route, which is refreshing), but their differences enable them to challenge and inspire each other. And they just met! So never fear — there’s always the possibility of adding a new bestie to your best friend tier.
