Right at the top, let me be clear: I am not one of those people who secretly hates the women she surrounds herself with. There might be a grain of anecdotal truth to 30 Rock’s Tracy Jordan asking Liz Lemon if she doesn’t want to plan Jenna’s bachelorette party “because you’re terrified of her, the way most white ladies are of their best friends,” but I’m an only child who learned to take refuge in female friendship early. Seventeen years after meeting my bestie Jazmine at high school orientation, we’re as close now as we were in ninth grade (albeit less codependently so); I’m still extremely tight with the circle of women I befriended during my first year of college; and many of the media-girlies group chats I found my way into as a newbie journalist in New York remain active.
All that said, when I saw Leslie Bibb, Michelle Monaghan, and Carrie Coon’s trio of 40-something girlypops check into the White Lotus Thailand this season, I felt like I was watching a barely clad ingenue run down to the basement to investigate a weird sound in a horror movie. I wanted to leap through the screen, grab Coon’s character Laurie by the shoulders, and tell her in no uncertain terms: “These women are not your friends, or if they are now, they won’t be by the end of your vacation. Run.”
It’s not like I think women can’t happily vacation together. I’ve personally taken some epic girls’ trips in my lifetime, from a rollicking tour of Vietnam with my college roommate Eliza, to a random yet delightful road trip through Kansas with my colleague-turned-friend Lauren, and an indulgent recent stay at the Hotel Bel-Air with Jazmine to celebrate the end of her first semester of law school.
And before you flood my inbox to yell about how transformative your group trip to Nashville was, let me say that there are, of course, exceptions to this rule. (And it’s not only a woman thing, either; I’m sure three men or nonbinary/gender-nonconforming individuals could also rub each other the wrong way on vacation!) But there is something about the number three that just doesn’t work in many travel instances.
As we’ve seen on this season of The White Lotus, two people are almost always going to find ways to connect at the expense of the third, the ensuing drama from which can easily ruin even the most expensive and lavishly planned getaway. This has borne out in my own life: I’ve found that in instances where I’m mired in a three-person social setup with no hope of escape, reflexes honed during the dog-eat-dog days of middle school kick in, and my competitive streak comes out. The result is that I am at my least peaceful and harmonious, even with people I love. Blame it on the intimacy of our bonds, but to quote Gabrielle Hamilton in her memoir Blood, Bones Butter, women have both made me feel like “brand-new money” and “brought me to the deepest bitterest tears of my existence.”
Now, I do have a few fond memories of three-person girls’ trips past, including one to the Hudson Valley, where all I remember us doing is taking artfully composed selfies and eating pierogis we brought up from the city. But I’m glad that unlike The White Lotus’s Jaclyn, Katie, and Laurie, I learned the three’s-a-crowd lesson before I hit my 40s and had to engage in a not-so-cute poolside fight peppered with phrases like “It’s just funny!” and “It doesn’t matter.” Dear reader, trust me; it’s not funny, and it does matter.
