There were closer friends within the group (Mallory and Jessi, Mary Anne and Kristy, Claudia and Stacey) but they all had each other’s backs and whatnot. Also, instead of three friends and their horses, there were between 4-10 members of this club at any given point (one of them was a boy, but he was really the only boy of any consequence in the entire series and he was only there because he was one of the girls’ boyfriends). Except I read a lot more of these and for a lot longer period of my life. There should be a series with hundreds of books about female friends for grownups. They had their spats, they had their Mean Girl Female Rival (there’s almost always that), but they were overall solid friends and gosh, that was nice. I didn’t read nearly all of these, and I came very late to this party (I was in fifth grade when my brief Saddle Club phase happened) but they were definitely lady friends.

They were friends because they were sisters, but they were still very important. When I did watch things that weren’t full of girls, I automatically latched onto the single girl (this is a habit that’s continued, I’ll admit it). Everyone was like “ Pokemon and Dragonball Z and things!” and I was like “okay, but I have Sailor Moon and that’s more girls and that’s enough for me.” Etcetera. With the exception of, like, popular Disney films or what have you, I didn’t really read or watch anything that wasn’t about a group of female friends or at least about women. But I’ve realized that, like I’ve doubtlessly mentioned before, I didn’t realize this was a problem for most of my childhood.

Bonus points if they’re groups of female friends, or they’re female friends who ultimately love each other like crazy. As partly evidenced by the fact that things like the Bechdel test have to exist, it’s sadly not too unreasonable that nowadays I get excited when female characters interact in a positive, friendly way.

Magic attic club dolls