A decade ago it became common for women to refer to a friend as her GBF (Gay Best Friend). The term was immediately identifiable. It arrived in the wake of Carrie Bradshaw and Stanford Blatch (SATC), mirroring a recognisable partnership that hadn’t been detailed with quite that heightened fictional accuracy yet. It was a new standard for its times.
When I was growing up in the 80s, only air stewardesses, hairdressers or those that worked at the BBC had GBFs. Men and women were rarely friends. 30 years later, in an atomised world, punctuated by the rabid need for approval online, we have come to the eventual realisation that it is not only men and women who are different, but everyone. New friendship subsets emerge.