Why Are We Desperate For Celebrities To Be Best Friends?

Matt and Ben. Beyoncé and Gwyneth. Taylor and Selena. Taylor and Karlie. Taylor and Lorde. Taylor and...well, you get the idea. The world loves a great love story, even if it's of the platonic variety. Once upon a time, that meant relishing the sight of real-life buddies Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon sharing the screen in film after film. Now, it means lumping a group of friendly celebrities into a "squad" and being quick to assign the BFF label, as though these folks spend every night making friendship bracelets and sending each other selfies. Take the recent gal-pal union of Amy Schumer and Jennifer Lawrence. The two actresses have been labeled as best friends after hopping on a Jet-Ski, dancing on Billy Joel's piano, and goofing around with balloons. It all sounds incredibly fun, but these are grown women. They're not just going to ditch their longtime friends to embrace their so-called instant-BFF status, no matter how happy it might make the media. (J Lawr has a real-life bestie, thankyouverymuch.) Schumer herself set everyone straight during an interview with E! reporter Marc Malkin at the Emmys. "We really like each other, but I think the media blew it up," she said. "We're not BFFs. We're just Fs, but we're really good Fs. I have BFFs since I was 8 years old, so it'll be tough to uproot them." Isn't that pretty much how the world works? It's glamorous for Taylor Swift to hang out with supermodels, but nobody will pull rank over her actual best friend, Abigail Anderson. Labeling every celebrity she goes shopping with, takes a selfie with, or invites on stage as a BFF essentially renders the term meaningless. We live in a hyperbolic age of click-baiting and exclamations and emojis. We can't just say we're happy. We need to throw in a smiley face, a few hearts, and a penguin or two. We can't just say "friend." It feels stale, too commonplace, because we all have so many friends, most of whom are just Facebook friends, most of whom are just acquaintances. We need to elevate it to BFF status, as though the relationship involves wearing best-friends-forever necklaces and buying neighboring cemetery plots. We make it sound like Taylor Swift would use her one phone call in jail to ring Cara Delevingne for bail money, and we wonder why Brad Pitt wasn't George Clooney's best man, which means they must have had some sort of falling out. We forget that it's okay to just be friends.