‘Friendship never ends’ sang the Spice Girls when riding the 90s girl power wave of faux, flimsy feminism.
It’s a sentiment that never did convince. How could it? We all know that ‘girl code’ is the most easily cracked and the fall out between gal pals fast and furious.
One minute you’re hand-holding besties, the next you’re (allegedly) threatening to leak the other’s private text messages.
Yes, step forward once inseparable mega mates Blake Lively and Taylor Swift – those bastions of sisterhood whose friendship has now been seemingly derailed by the actress’s escalating legal feud with It Ends With Us co-star, Justin Baldoni.
The Gossip Girl alumna has accused the actor and director of sexual harassment and starting a smear campaign against her – allegations Baldoni has strenuously denied and met with a counter suit.
Blake and Taylor were once so close – literally. Draped over each other on nights out or cheerfully embracing in the stands at a Kansas City Chiefs game as Taylor’s boyfriend, tight end Travis Kelce, scored another touchdown, the duo reveled in the amplified star power of their A list union – especially Blake.
Step forward once inseparable mega mates Blake Lively and Taylor Swift – those bastions of sisterhood whose friendship has now been seemingly derailed by the actress’s escalating legal feud with It Ends With Us co-star, Justin Baldoni .
The Gossip Girl alumna has accused the actor and director of sexual harassment and starting a smear campaign against her – allegations Baldoni has strenuously denied and met with a counter suit. (Baldoni and Lively are pictured in a scene from ‘It Ends With Us’).Â
Blake and Taylor were once so close – literally. Draped over each other on nights out or cheerfully embracing pitch side at a Kansas City Chiefs game as Taylor’s boyfriend, tight end Travis Kelce, scored another touchdown.Â
‘I have a “Taylor Swift Please Be My Wife Voo Doo Doll,” she gushed on Instagram in 2015 in what appeared to be a very public play to join the Bad Blood singer’s much coveted girl squad.
‘Love my Canadian family almost as much as I love Taylor Lively. I mean Swift. Ok, FIIINE we can hyphenate our last names. Xo Blake Swift-Lively 4eva.’
All very cringe, but in La La Land effusive fangirling clearly works.
A decade-long friendship developed between Blake and Taylor, who is now godmother to the actress’s four children with Ryan Reynolds – James, 10, Inez, 8, and twins Betty and Olin, 2 – who all proudly supported their ‘aunt’ Taylor on her record-breaking Eras Tour.
Taylor even hosted her best gal pal’s 37th birthday at her Westerly, Rhode Island mansion last August.
What a difference a lawsuit makes.
Now the gulf between the two seems as wide as beleaguered Blake’s ‘everything is fine’ rictus grin. Because while Taylor has been dragged into the saga as one of Blake’s so-called ‘dragons,’ she has uttered not one word in her bestie’s support.
Last week, a court letter submitted by Baldoni’s legal team claimed that an increasingly desperate Blake had threatened to leak ‘intimate’ text messages from the 37-year-old singer unless Taylor publicly sided with her in the ongoing battle.
The messages were reportedly full of intensely personal information about Taylor’s boyfriend Travis, Brit singer and brief squeeze Matty Healy and her six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn.
The actress’s legal team has ‘unequivocally denied’ the claims but the damage has been done and the rumor mill kicked into overdrive.
It’s easy to see why. Taylor once mused, ‘There is something amazing when a woman helps another woman – we lift each other up.’ Yet she has been virtually AWOL since the drama engulfing her friend started.
A decade-long friendship developed between Blake and Taylor, who is now godmother to the actress’s four children with Ryan Reynolds – James, 10, Inez,8, and twins Betty and Olin, 2 – who all proudly supported their ‘aunt’ Taylor on her record-breaking Eras Tour.
Taylor even hosted her best gal pal’s 37th birthday at her Westerly, Rhode Island mansion last August. (Lively and Swift are pictured with another member of their girl gang, Gigi Hadid).Â
Now the gulf between the two seems as wide as beleaguered Blake’s, ‘everything is fine’ rictus grin. Because while Taylor has been dragged into the saga as one of Blake’s so-called ‘dragons,’ she has uttered not one word in her bestie’s support.Â
Uncharacteristically camera shy and tight-lipped, Taylor’s silence suggests that the woman whose brand has long been rooted in female friendships has her limits when things get a little bit messy.
A lack of loyalty at odds with her image and message? Perhaps. Though it’s hardly surprising amid the broader backlash facing Blake and her mean girl credentials, of which they are plenty.
Who can forget her passive aggressive mauling of the Norwegian journalist Kjersti Flaa while promoting her film, Café Society in 2016? Flaa had the temerity to congratulate the former Gossip Girl star on her second pregnancy.
‘Congratulations on your little bump.’
‘Congratulations, on your little bump’ batted back the actress in a snide dig at what she deemed to be less than gym honed abs.
And this was on camera. Forget a saucer of milk and give her the whole carton.
So where does that leave us now? Well, it looks like there could be a vacancy in Taylor’s girl squad for another photogenic high achiever, ideally with a lot less baggage.
Blake, meanwhile, is taking a break from the high-profile sisterhood and was seen holding hands with hubby on a romantic stroll in New York this week.
In truth, this disintegration is all very familiar. Because, while high profile female spats may play out in the spotlight, amid luxe accessories and lawsuits, gal pal ghosting affects us all.
I know only too well how brutally the switch can be flicked when the friend you’ve known since you were seven suddenly becomes a stranger.
From being thrown out of the UK’s version of Girl Scouts (for, erm, being mean girls) and ejected from bars, right through to seminal rites of passage – 21st birthdays, holidays, bachelorette parties and weddings – we laughed and cried as perma-fixtures in each other lives from childhood to adulthood then……nothing.
The woman I assumed would be in my life always suddenly wasn’t.
Bonds carved out in the schoolyard aren’t easily replaced. The void manifests itself as a kind of bereavement. Even though you’re both alive and well you mourn for what you’ve lost.
Uncharacteristically camera shy and tight-lipped, Taylor’s silence suggests that the woman whose brand has long been rooted in female friendships has her limits when things get a little bit messy. (The pair are pictured in 2015).Â
Blake is taking a break from the high-profile sisterhood and was seen holding hands with hubby on a romantic stroll in New York this week.
There is a heart-breaking bank of fading memories, from my name written in her childish sprawl in her schoolbook next to BEST FRIEND!! underlined twice, to the breathless call when she rang to tell me she’d met ‘The One.’
We were very different people, but we complimented each other. She was the bungee jumping globe trotter. I was the cynical homebody, though somehow, she always saw me as the rebel.
She taught me to swim and embraced all my quirks while, for me, she was quite simply the life and soul of the party who guaranteed we would have the best time wherever we went and whatever we did.
When she married and moved, we were still in regular contact, but it started to fade. Catch up calls became occasional; messages shrank to an annual birthday greeting on Instagram.
Then I learnt she was pregnant via an Instagram photo of her – her usual glamorous self only, this time, with a huge bump.
This was the kind of special news I’d once assumed would be shared over dinner and drinks. My congratulatory message never got a reply, while another one sharing my own updates of a house move and book deal was also not deemed worthy of a response.
The reasons are unclear. Maybe without children myself I no longer fit into her world and its new priorities. But it’s a sad reminder that the bond of female friendship is not always as strong as we like to think, however all-consuming the relationship once was.
Friendship does end and those friendship bracelets, woven over the years, can be snapped in an instant just as they have with Blake and Taylor.
Because let’s face it, right now it’s less, ‘Blake Swift-Lively 4eva’ and more, ‘Blake and Swift-Lively are over.’
