You know what annoys me? That there is no cool female equivalent of the word "bromance". Yeah, I've heard of "galmance", but I really do not like that term. Who calls their female friends gals? (No offense to those who do). But seriously it's like someone did a half-assed synonym search for the word woman and just stuck "-mance" at the end.
I took my dilemma to the internet. Urban Dictionary supplied me with "womance" which I thought was kinda cute. I also saw "sismance" pop up a couple of times. Despite a couple of terms signifying sisterly love are floating around on the internet, there is no unifying word like "bromance". This brings me to my next point...
Every movie or TV show you watch you'll see an abundance of male bonding or in other words "bromancing". Females most of the time just show up to be the love interest (Even when she is the main character: Elena Gilbert, Bella Swan, etc.) If the female character does have another female character around, well most of the time she's just there to either give the main female character a hard time or serve as sounding-off board. So I guess the real problem is that not enough girl bonding or sisterhood is portrayed in popular culture to warrant a real unified term describing such a relationship.
Now don't get me wrong. I absolutely love a good bromance, but I think I would love a good...sismance also. Nope, don't like that word either. Off the top of my head the only sis-love (bleh, moving on) I can only think of are: Katniss and Prim Everdeen from The Hunger Games, Buffy and Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serena and Blair from Gossip Girl, Leslie and Anne from Parks and Recreation, and Abbie and Jenny Mills from Sleepy Hollow. Now that is just sad. Why is the portrayal of female friendships the weakest in TV shows and movies? For example, some of the most boring parts of The Vampire Diaries is when Elena is bonding with Bonnie and Caroline. Do the writers not know how female friends interact? Their conversations are always so sappy and trite. The only real friendship I see in that show is between Stefan and Caroline (well up until this season). It's like writers don't know how to write female characters without the support of male characters.
On the other hand, I can go on and on listing all the "bromantic" relationships I've come across:
Sam and Dean (Supernatural)
Dean and Castiel (Supernatural)
Sam and Castiel (Supernatural)
Prince Arthur and Merlin (Merlin)
Will and Carlton (The Fresh Prince of Bel Air)
Jack and John Locke (Lost)
Jack and Sawyer (Lost)
Hurley and Charlie (Lost)
Jack Sparrow and Will Turner (Pirates of the Caribbean)
Rick Grimes and Daryl Dixon (The Walking Dead)
The Salvatores (The Vampire Diaries)
Wesley and Gunn (Angel)
Steve Rodgers and Bucky Barnes (Captain America)
The whole Avengers movie...
Basically every guy in Teen Wolf is in at least one... (EDIT: But to be fair, I do like Lydia and Allison's friendship in the later seasons)
I could go on and on, but I'll end with etc.
Sigh...so where are all the compelling female friendships? Maybe my scope is too limited, but I don't think so, 'cuz I really do watch a lot of TV/movies. I guess it's up to us creative people to create more compelling female friendship or sisterly bonds in fiction, and you know come up with a kick-ass term for it. I kinda like sistah-love...
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