It’s National Girlfriend Day Today

It’s national girlfriend day today, (August 1) so get ready to celebrate with your female significant other.

I’m not sure how official this holiday actually is, but it’s a good excuse for partners everywhere to show their girlfriend just how much they mean to them.

To be fair, it’s the kind of day that shouldn’t really need to exist – surely you don’t need an excuse to appreciate your girlfriend? But also, isn’t this what Valentine’s Day’s for?

The fact is, it does exist, so you should recognise it.

We could definitely make this day more inclusive, and stretch it to friends who’re girls, you know, girl friends.

Then, the single ladies, as well as the taken ones can be showered in love and celebration from their mates, which sounds like just what we need on this overcast Wednesday.

Today is no doubt also an excuse for social media to overflow with loving, albeit cheesy, posts. So if you’re feeling salty about people in relationships at the moment, look away now…

Some partners might need a little help figuring out how exactly to recognise the day, but that’s okay.

As this girlfriend so usefully advised, one way to celebrate it, is to simply ‘honour [your girlfriend] greatly’.

National Girlfriend Day can also be used to wallow in loneliness, which maybe isn’t the most uplifting way to spend the day?

But hey, at least memes and gifs are always there for you if that’s the case.

The website Days Of The Year has provided us with some more information about this specific day, and revealed how, apparently, it did actually have the origin of simply being a day for female friends.

The website reads:

Let us begin with what Girl Friend’s Day is – the day of the girl friend. A girl, well that definition is well and obvious for the most part.

A friend is a person to whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection. That doesn’t mean sexual relations, just relations.

On August 1, 2004, Mistress Susan created a special day just for girl friends to express gratitude to one another — think Girls Night Out.

Since September 22, 2005, Chase’s Calendar of Events has listed August 1st as Girlfriends’ Day.

Ladies, you can get together with your girl friends to go to the park, to a Broadway play, out to eat at a restaurant opening, see an indie movie, to an upscale spa, or shop at Bergdorf’s.

So it seems the Girls Night Out origin of the day morphed into quite the opposite when Chase’s Calendar of Events got rid of that space between ‘Girl’ and ‘Friend’, and created the impression the day is for couples.

But that’s not to say we have to celebrate the day that way – a lot of people are still sticking to the original definition.

Other people have pointed out August 1 is actually the celebration of something else very important…

National Raspberry Cream Pie Day.

Yep!

Surely we could just combine the two days, and people can then take their girlfriend or girl friends out for some raspberry cream pie.

I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Wednesday!

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Emily Brown

Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.