Female Friendships
In the film, "Boys on the Side," the normalcy of female relationships is put under the microscope. All three main female characters create a family unit that is in no way normal to society's structure. Robin embodies the dominant woman of society, a white, straight, working woman. Her role in creating an irregular family unit doesn't come until we find out she has AIDs, casting her into the pool of disabled, and stereotypically broken women. Jane juxtaposes all of this. She is black, gay, has an inconsistent job, and is healthy. The relationship between these two women alone bends the boundaries of social constraints. They enter into a very close friendship which turns into love. Though Jane is a lesbian, there relationship transcends sexuality and really blossoms from understanding and the connection of their differences, aka Robin's struggle with her disease, and Jane's constant battle to defend her color and sexuality. Then we throw in Holly, the whore archetype. She is dependent on men; after Nick beats her, she still tries to go back to him. As she becomes pregnant, she signifies a transformation from the whore to the mother archetype, and as she joins the family unit, completes it as the major types of women are represented. As a white, single, pregnant female, Holly aids in bending social constructions. By the end of the movie, the women have reinscribed "normal" in their unit in their justification of their relationship. In the court scene, Robin talks about an uncommon bond amongst women, that they naturally understand each other. This validates the family unit as normal since who can really deny that women have an unspeakable bond, no matter what type they are. Also, as nothing sexual occurs between the women, they stay within the confines of normalcy with their bodies, making all the difference in a 1990's movie.