Every Leading Lady is somebodies Best Friend.

One of my friends wrote a blog the other day. (you can find it here) She wrote about the differences between leading ladies and the best friend in movies. It is a very good post and thought provoking about whether it is better to be the leading lady of our lives or the best friend. She concludes that it is better to be the best friend.

She comes to this conclusion by weighing the differences between the leading lady and the best friend.

Let's examine the quintessential leading lady role for a moment, shall we? In the movies, the leading lady typically follows these rules:

1.) She likes an amazing guy, but...
2.) ...there is always some sort of problem with her relationship with said amazing guy.
3.) She goes through an incredibly rough period, generally towards the end of the film just before the happy ending. This can involve heartbreak, the loss of a job, the death of a dear friend/family member, jail time, ect.
4.) She goes through a TON of drama and sad music before she finally manages to land aforementioned amazing guy.
5.) She can be somewhat of a drama queen and thinks that the entire world revolves around her.

Some examples of this kind of leading lady would be: Bella Swan in "Twilight," Jane in "27 Dresses," Cameron Diaz in "The Holiday," Mary Fiori in "The Wedding Planner," and Rose in "Titanic."

Now, let's examine the quintessential best friend role. In the movies, the best friend typically follows THESE rules:

1.) She is very often the comic relief, meaning she gets the wittiest lines.
2.) Most of the time, she is either married or in a stable relationship with an amazing guy. Usually the best friend's amazing guy isn't quite as handsome or as witty as the leading lady's amazing guy, but I reiterate, STABLE RELATIONSHIP. Low drama, and he's home at night when she gets there.
3.) She doesn't usually go through a really sad time just before the ending. Instead, she is there for her best friend, the leading lady, through thick and thin, further endearing her to the audience because of her selflessness and comic relief.
4.) She is allowed to have a quirky sense of fashion.
5.) She is often exceptional in some way, like as a fashion maven or a cook or having superior guy crushing skills.

Some examples of this kind of best friend would be: the girls in P.S. I Love You, particularly Lisa Kudrow's character, Sookie in "Gilmore Girls," Angela Weber in "Twilight, Paulette in "Legally Blonde," and Penelope Garcia in "Criminal Minds."

In many ways she is right. Why would we want to be the leading lady instead of the best friend? ( aside from the fact that in our own lives we are always the leading lady, no matter how we act.) Whether it’s better to live life as a best friend, or a leading lady is not really what I started thinking about. I was reading this post, and thinking about some other things in my life, and I started thinking about how the best friend becomes the best friend. Best friends couldn’t and didn’t start out being the quirky, stable, confident, rock for the leading lady, or for themselves.

Nobody starts out making all the right decisions all the time. So the best friend couldn’t have started out as the seemingly put together best friend. Take Nick and Nora, for example. Her best friend, Caroline, is hardly the put together best friend who has everything going for her. In fact I would argue that Nora is the best friend AND the leading lady. Nora Is always there for Caroline, always taking care of her, and worrying over her, but she is not the stereotypical leading best friend either. She falls for this amazing guy, who is not a great looker. Instead Nick is an awkward musicophillac, who perfectly complements Nora. In the world of best friends, it would seem that they fall madly in love virtually instantly, and continue on in a stable, “normal” relationship that in the future will be used to help get the leading lady through a difficult time. Of course this isn’t the case because Nora is also the leading lady. She has ex trouble, both her own and Nick’s (though mostly Nick’s)

If you were to look at the best friend’s life before she is immortalized as the best friend, you’d find a leading lady who is struggling to figure things out on her own; making the same mistakes that Diaz and Winslet make in The Holiday, or Jane in 27 Dresses, or Gigi in He’s Just Not That into You.

There is also that fact, that when we are going through a rough patch, trying to make things work with an amazing guy, or make that perfect job exactly what we want it, we (as the leading lady) tend to view the support and camaraderie of the best friend’s character through rose coloured glasses. Just because her life seems all polished and put together, doesn’t mean it is. We just can’t always see it because our own problems are in the way, or because as the best friend who loves and cares for the leading lady, they downplay their own troubles until a more appropriate time. Even if we know that things aren’t perfect in our best friend’s life, we tend to remember them as a more perfect, put together person, because they offered us solace, friendship, advice, and the occasional murder offer during our trials and tribulations. Nobody wants to think of the rock that kept us together and sane during the hiccups that interrupt our own lives, as a collection of pebbles that is just sturdy enough to support us to shore. Of course the irony is, that in real life, this rock shaky pebble helps us to shore, and then we get to turn around and be their shaky pebble rock to help them to shore.

Every Best Friend starts out as a Leading Lady. It’s after the movie ends, and she has suffered the drama that she can reflect and learn and grow into the best friend for someone else'S leading lady.