Leslie Kern

World-making means the process of both imagining and creating space(s) where things can unfold otherwise. Practicing female friendship as a way of life is, I think, a world-making activity.

When communities
advocate for “spaces for youth,” the kinds of spaces they come up with are
skate parks, basketball courts, and hockey arenas. In other words, spaces that
have boys in mind as users, and where girls have trouble finding access, acceptance, and safety.

When Swedish architecture firm White Arkitekter actually approached teenage girls to design scale models of public space, the
girls came up with “places for sitting together face to face, protected from weather and wind, to see without necessary [sic] being seen, a sense of intimacy without being constrictive; and most of all, to be able to leave an imprint on their city.” 1

In my suburban adolescence, that space was the mall.
Easily accessed, inviting no probing questions from our parents, always
warm and safe.

Even though those long nights of endless intimate talk are few and far between for my friends and I, we haven’t stopped picturing our futures together. Sensing, perhaps, that most of us will outlive any men in our lives
or that lifelong partnership may not be in the cards, and that relying on our
post-millennial children to take care of us is probably not a solid plan, we
often joke about soon reserving spaces in the same retirement home. Maybe
our partners will be there, just in a separate wing.

growing old with a lifelong
romantic partner either seems unrealistic, undesirable, or boring as hell.

Given all of the ways that women rely on one another to provide not just the emotional support of friendship, but the very material support of shared childcare, elder care, transportation, housing, health care, and so many other completely necessary things, would it not make sense for cities to have the infrastructure to support
such arrangements?