Traveling Pants

Women’s college instilled in me persistent ideas about sisterhood—a concept that’s related to but distinct from feminism.  Along with traveling pants, there are hallmarks of sisterhood; there are unwritten rules.  In the iteration I know best, sisterhood involves fierce loyalty, red wine and late-night voyages to either the frozen yogurt shop or a more grown-up shop. Both in one night for the ambitious.  As a graduate of a place where the water was metallic with the taste of sisterhood, I carry with me an outline of how I should treat other women and how they should treat me in return.  Then, how all this corresponds to the way we date. The outline can be titled, crassly, “Chicks Before Dicks,” but the sub-points are infinite and nuanced.

As a mostly single woman, I attempt to navigate hetero-dating terrain while staying true to the sisterhood.  This can be tricky.   At school, whenever I started to date someone, I felt a pang of guilt for spending my Friday nights with a boy rather than with the sisterhood.  Intellectually, I knew this was crazy, but it always felt like I’d broken a rule, betrayed my sisters for a co-ed who may or may not turn out to be important. No matter who I chose—the sisterhood or a boy—guilt was unavoidable.   It was a near-impossible balancing act: admitting to yourself that you did, indeed, want to date, but that you also wanted to be a genuine part of the sisterhood. Not the flakey sister who came and went with the unpredictable tides of relationships.  When a friend left the flock for a boy, we’d be excited, but there were undertones of less enthusiastic emotions from the sisters left behind.   The seedy underbelly of sisterhood. 

This weekend, I messed with the rules of sisterhood by putting a dating desire over the feelings of another woman.   This isn’t really my style.  There’s not much space in sisterhood for that type of girl, but suddenly I was strutting in her ill-fitting shoes.  I felt guilty about the minor betrayal, but mostly I started to think about contemporary sisterhood more broadly.   How should sisterhood play out as we date and try to keep balance?

In the past, I have strained relationships by being too distant.  When I isolated sisterhood at the peak of the priority mountain, I realize looking back that I wasn’t much of a girlfriend.   On the flipside, I have made irresponsible, embarrassing dating decisions—blatantly going against the advice of my girlfriends and knocking over others on my way.  Being a member in good-standing is no easy feat.  You practice and learn from your mistakes, but there are always more to be made. Hurt feelings, confused boys, offended girls.  I have been on both sides.  Sisterhood is important, but so too is functional dating in your twenties. Isolating one too dramatically can lead to an imbalance from which it might be hard to recover.  Maybe the answer is to wear your traveling pants on a date and your sexiest underwear out with your girlfriends. Subtle reminders to stay conscious while pursuing what feels right.