How Covid-19 Exposed the Entrenchment of Neoliberal Ideals Within Female Friendship

Abstract

As hook-up culture overtakes dating, the average age at marriage increases, and romantic relationships expand beyond historical expectations of heterosexuality, friendship has become an increasingly central relationship for many college students (Demir, 2010; Holland, 1990). Through an ethnographic study of undergraduate and graduate student friendship networks, I examine how Covid-19 highlights the way in which forms of emotional work within female friendship take on a neoliberal shape as they pervade into student’s understandings and aspirations for themselves as self-determined and continually improving individuals (Hochschild, 1983; Gill, 2018). I argue that as market principles encroach into the intimate sphere of personal relationships, requiring the honing of personality traits such as resilience, flexibility, and relentless positivity, friendship becomes both a tool and a barometer of self-development and in turn, self-value among young adult women (Springer et al, 2016).