Aperol, late-night laughs – and some gritty life truths: why girls’ trips aren’t just fluffy fun | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

I have just come back from a much-anticipated girls’ holiday to Puglia, and to say that it fulfilled expectations would be an understatement. We swam, we napped, we reminisced, we ate little bits of crudo alongside lovely sips of fiano, we danced around the table of the Airbnb while singing along to Sarà perché ti amo. Most of all, we laughed, sometimes until our stomachs hurt and our faces were wet with tears.

What a joy the girls’ trip is (despite our ages, “women” doesn’t feel right here somehow). Maybe that’s because at times during the holiday I was transported back to when we were indeed “girls” and studying together in Italy (although this time with far less street harassment – a realisation that prompted mixed feelings until a belated “Che bellissime!” saved the day).

Powered by Aperol – who may as well sponsor them at this point – thousands of girls’ trips will be taking place as I write. At this very moment, I can almost guarantee that somewhere in southern Europe, a woman is detailing her husband’s domestic habits with the meticulous comic precision of a standup routine, as her crochet-clad audience cackle, rattle their ice cubes supportively and holler the occasional “Boo!”

The girls’ trip has become an institution, a central tenet of “hun” culture and the subject of myriad films, books and TV shows, most recently The Five-Star Weekend, in which a widowed Jennifer Garner brings together friends from different phases of her life for a holiday. My own novel, Female, Nude, uses a girls’ trip to a Greek villa as the backdrop for an examination of friendship between four women in their early 30s who are all starting to ask themselves questions about ambition, marriage and motherhood. Sophie, my protagonist, is kicking hardest against the sacrifices she feels she will have to make in the next phase of her life, which is partly why she embarks on an explosive affair.

Pauline Collins in the 1989 film Shirley Valentine. Photograph: PARAMOUNT/Allstar

Her story is not new. Ever since oppressed and controlled housewife Shirley Valentine took herself off to Greece with her friend Jane in 1989, the girls’ trip has become a byword for emancipation (even for those who don’t stray outside their relationships), and the deep need for women to have time away together. Rewatching Shirley as an adult woman feels powerfully poignant. Not all of us get the chance to travel, or feel so liberated. “It’s great you’re doing this,” another woman said to me before I went on my trip, as we discussed how hard it can be to organise a holiday with so many competing demands at home.

I have known my travel companions for almost 20 years and we now have seven children between us, all under the age of eight. To swim out into the ocean without worrying about needing to get back to them, to have a conversation that was uninterrupted by them, where men were also not present, felt rare and precious. Luxurious, even. We talked about everything: birth, death, health, our bodies and senses of identity, the men we love and have loved and didn’t love, our children, and our hopes and fears for them. We covered fashion, the football, whether or not to get life insurance, how long it’s safe to keep an arancino on the beach before eating it, getting older. The conversation ebbed and flowed – we dipped in and out as we wanted – and somewhere in that very feminine mix of comedy and heartache, profound truths were arrived at (or maybe it was just the spicy margs).

There’s a tendency to trivialise girls’ holidays – “oh look, the lasses are getting on the wine!” – and indeed, I just did it with that crack about margaritas. There are certainly some who don’t seem to think that the girls’ holiday is a subject worthy of serious cultural or literary inquiry (the terrible Sex and the City films didn’t help). Yet I knew I wanted to write about one because it is often during those opportunities to step away from your life for a little while, alongside other women who have known you for years and about whom you care deeply, that your emotions are cast in high relief. Perhaps the revelations that follow will bring about change, perhaps they won’t, but the chance to mix freedom, fun and serious self-inquiry should always be taken when it’s presented. I’ve certainly returned home with a new perspective. Time to start planning the next trip.

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist. Her new book, Female, Nude is out now