SUPPER CLUB BY LARA WILLIAMS
30 September 2019 • books
My sister sent me a photo of this book, telling me she was adding it to her list to-read list and that I might like it and I stumbled across it again in a bookshop several weeks ago. We often share recommendations and more often than not, we're right in our guesses that we'll enjoy them and this time, in particular, she was definitely right.
Supper Club follows twenty-nine-year-old Roberta, who has lived her life searching for something more to satiate the empty, longing feeling in her. When she, and roommate Stevie, decide to set up the Supper Club, they begin a journey that Roberta hopes will finally quell her hunger. Each woman who attends carries her own hunger and fears, her own history and struggle, and when they meet they gorge themselves, eat until they cannot take more, talk and share, and grow in more ways than one. As we follow month by month, the progression of the Supper Club, we learn more about Roberta and the loss and loneliness that she and many of the women feel. Not only the desperate urge to find and be more but also what we might have to do to achieve that.
Williams splits the novel between Roberta's present experiences and recollections of her past, from her years at university and her job after she graduates. What she captures, most fascinatingly, is the changing and ever inescapable relationship so many women have with their bodies, with wanting to be free from them, yet wanting to make them better, wanting to never be concerned with it and yet be so aware of how hard that is. For Roberta, this tangles together intimately with her experiences of low self-image and her struggles to adapt to university life, and as we follow the tumultuous and challenging relationships she has at university, with these experiences interjected between the planning and execution of the Supper Clubs, we begin to see and understand the moments and people that have affected and shaped her, for better and worse.
Roberta, as with so many of the women that they meet and interview before they attend the supper club, is struggling to be herself. Or more specifically, to take up space unashamedly as who she is. That's partly what seems to attract her to her outgoing friend and roommate Stevie and also what drives her to create the Supper Club where the women are invited to be open with themselves, and to take up space and be loud and, most importantly, to consume rather than be consumed. Through all of these meetings what becomes clear is Williams characters desire to find joy again, to live without being overwhelmed by fear. "I was still so afraid," thinks Roberta, "and yet so desirous of everything. Fear and freedom, occupying opposite ends of the spectrum, though inexorably tied. Freedom as abstract, fear essential to it: the necessary risk without which it was meaningless."
As we learn more of Roberta's past relationships including a long and toxic one with an older man, we begin to see a common root problem. Roberta is never able to find space for herself in these relationships, they are all-consuming without offering nourishment in return. As Roberta shares her journey into a love of cooking at university, a passion which also drives the Supper Club, she shares recipes with instructions, cultural meanings, and perhaps their own lesson within, each of which offering kind of nourishment that the characters need. "I felt like I was carrying a pillbox of my wants and needs somewhere in my chest, just behind my ribcage. I kept lifting the lid to slip things inside." She, like so many of the women, have made themselves small and then smaller still, and this comes not just from their romantic relationships but their relationships with each other too.
Williams offers up a true, imperfect, and fascinating friendship between Roberta and Stevie, with all the good and bad on display, the ways they are kind to one another and the ways our friends can become our worst enemies at times, often stemming from our own insecurities. Yet, as the novel progresses William's begins to offer a slow and gradual growth. Not just from the good moments but from the difficult ones too, the arguments and breakdowns, the moments Roberta begins to reclaim herself, the sharp truths we come to face and the poisons we can finally exorcise from ourselves however ugly or painful they may be so we can move on.
Supper Club offers an open, vibrant exploration of female friendship, of finding your appetite once again, of growing up and letting go. "I felt the weight of myself press into the carpet [...]" says Roberta near the end of the novel, "how I was responsible for no other weight than my own. All I had to carry through life was myself. I wished someone had told me that sooner." From the dark and bitterness, to the sharp joy, conflicting desires, and search for freedom of young adulthood, Williams novel is it's own kind of nourishment, well needed and wise, reminding us to find and recognise our desires, not to let ourselves grow small, and to search unashamedly for the things that will satisfy our hunger.
Supper Club follows twenty-nine-year-old Roberta, who has lived her life searching for something more to satiate the empty, longing feeling in her. When she, and roommate Stevie, decide to set up the Supper Club, they begin a journey that Roberta hopes will finally quell her hunger. Each woman who attends carries her own hunger and fears, her own history and struggle, and when they meet they gorge themselves, eat until they cannot take more, talk and share, and grow in more ways than one. As we follow month by month, the progression of the Supper Club, we learn more about Roberta and the loss and loneliness that she and many of the women feel. Not only the desperate urge to find and be more but also what we might have to do to achieve that.
Williams splits the novel between Roberta's present experiences and recollections of her past, from her years at university and her job after she graduates. What she captures, most fascinatingly, is the changing and ever inescapable relationship so many women have with their bodies, with wanting to be free from them, yet wanting to make them better, wanting to never be concerned with it and yet be so aware of how hard that is. For Roberta, this tangles together intimately with her experiences of low self-image and her struggles to adapt to university life, and as we follow the tumultuous and challenging relationships she has at university, with these experiences interjected between the planning and execution of the Supper Clubs, we begin to see and understand the moments and people that have affected and shaped her, for better and worse.
Roberta, as with so many of the women that they meet and interview before they attend the supper club, is struggling to be herself. Or more specifically, to take up space unashamedly as who she is. That's partly what seems to attract her to her outgoing friend and roommate Stevie and also what drives her to create the Supper Club where the women are invited to be open with themselves, and to take up space and be loud and, most importantly, to consume rather than be consumed. Through all of these meetings what becomes clear is Williams characters desire to find joy again, to live without being overwhelmed by fear. "I was still so afraid," thinks Roberta, "and yet so desirous of everything. Fear and freedom, occupying opposite ends of the spectrum, though inexorably tied. Freedom as abstract, fear essential to it: the necessary risk without which it was meaningless."
As we learn more of Roberta's past relationships including a long and toxic one with an older man, we begin to see a common root problem. Roberta is never able to find space for herself in these relationships, they are all-consuming without offering nourishment in return. As Roberta shares her journey into a love of cooking at university, a passion which also drives the Supper Club, she shares recipes with instructions, cultural meanings, and perhaps their own lesson within, each of which offering kind of nourishment that the characters need. "I felt like I was carrying a pillbox of my wants and needs somewhere in my chest, just behind my ribcage. I kept lifting the lid to slip things inside." She, like so many of the women, have made themselves small and then smaller still, and this comes not just from their romantic relationships but their relationships with each other too.
Williams offers up a true, imperfect, and fascinating friendship between Roberta and Stevie, with all the good and bad on display, the ways they are kind to one another and the ways our friends can become our worst enemies at times, often stemming from our own insecurities. Yet, as the novel progresses William's begins to offer a slow and gradual growth. Not just from the good moments but from the difficult ones too, the arguments and breakdowns, the moments Roberta begins to reclaim herself, the sharp truths we come to face and the poisons we can finally exorcise from ourselves however ugly or painful they may be so we can move on.
Supper Club offers an open, vibrant exploration of female friendship, of finding your appetite once again, of growing up and letting go. "I felt the weight of myself press into the carpet [...]" says Roberta near the end of the novel, "how I was responsible for no other weight than my own. All I had to carry through life was myself. I wished someone had told me that sooner." From the dark and bitterness, to the sharp joy, conflicting desires, and search for freedom of young adulthood, Williams novel is it's own kind of nourishment, well needed and wise, reminding us to find and recognise our desires, not to let ourselves grow small, and to search unashamedly for the things that will satisfy our hunger.
BODY NEUTRALITY IN VOGUE
9 September 2019 • lifestyle, wellbeing
Aside from a subscription I have to Oh Comely and springing for the occasional Kinfolk issue when I'm feeling flush, I'm not usually one to buy magazines that often. Though I often flick through them as absentmindedly as anyone else in waiting rooms and friends houses, I don't' usually make a point of buying fashion magazines but this month I made a beeline for the magazine aisle for one glossy front cover in particular.
The September issue of Vogue is always a bigger deal for the magazine, partly for the change in season and fashion, but also because the house traditionally produces a slightly more daring, dramatic, or creative cover and this year it was something particularly special. The September 2019 cover featured the portrait shots of fifteen inspirational women, with one mirror style square left blank to show yourself as the sixteenth woman, and it was guest-edited by the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.
A fashion magazine will, of course, always be a fashion magazine but there is still a lot of manoeuvring room for new ideas and mindsets in amongst those pages and the guest editing of the Duchess of Sussex alongside editor in chief Edward Enniful led to some fantastic articles in this months issue. From the Duchess' interview with Michelle Obama; the mini-interviews with each of the cover women including Greta Thurenburg, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and author Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche; Prince Harry's conversational interview with ethologist Jane Goodard; to the Duchess' work as the patron of Smart Works charity which aims to prove clothes and coaching to unemployed women in need, the Forces for Change section of the magazine was full of thought-provoking pieces.
One of the articles that also caught my eye was by actress and activist, Jameela Jamil, titled "Come As You Are". I love the work Jamil does for self-image positivity, acceptance, and fighting for change, and in this piece, she discusses something that's still working its way up into people's minds; body neutrality. Body neutrality proposes that rather than focusing overly negatively or indeed over positively on aspects of our body and appearance that we instead simply let them be and become more neutral. It sounds simple enough but it can be hard in a society that rarely lets the little things go when it comes to appearance, weight, and image, but it definitely struck a chord with me.
Jamil is quick to comment that this isn't intended as a way to shame self-love or purposeful body positivity but something that comes from her own experiences of body image issues. She comments that any mindset that encourages a focus on the body is "just a new way for my mind to fixate on my flesh again, which is still taking up space better used for other thoughts and plans." I thought about this for a while after reading the piece and realised how much I resonated with it. As a disclaimer, if the following works for you then, of course, one hundred per cent go for it and shout it from the rooftops, but for me the whole "love stretch marks because they're lightning stripes" or I love the way this happens on my body because it's so incredible and amazing just never quite rings authentic. Why? Because it's just a body.
Yes, we should love the skin we're in and this isn't intended to reduce that by taking away any self-love but rather it's because I don't want us to have to swing from one extreme end of the scale to the other. I'd like it to simply be that stretch marks are there because that happens when you grow, that wrinkles come because that's what happens as you age and that your body is the way it is because that's how bodies exist. I'd like for us not to have to pronounce all these things as magical, wonderful signs of feminine glory that we have to exalt to high heaven to bear about ourselves when we look in the mirror but let them simply be things that happen to any body and pretty much every body. They're things we don't have to over criticise or overpraise. They're things we shouldn't have to spend so much time thinking about at all because they're just a part of us.
That's what Jamil so decisively pinpoints. "I catch every thought I'm having about my body and instantly drop kick it out of my brain. I have more important things to do," she writes. Sometimes the desperate effort to love your body that started off with such good intentions becomes just another way to scrutinise every part of yourself. Carolyn Gage wrote in The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, "You can make [a woman] frightened of puberty, frightened of sex, frightened of ageing, frightened of eating. You can terrorize her with her own body, and then she will torture herself." How true has that become of our society's continued criticism and examination of every flaw in our bodies that has settled in all of our subconsciouses and every marketed product that promises to fix that? This doesn't mean not enjoying make-up or fashion but rather dropping all the judgemental connotations that like to hang off these things. I don't want us to be scared of our bodies but I don't want us to be obsessed with them either, in whatever form that focus comes in. So perhaps body neutrality is a step in the right direction and one that invites us to set our minds free from expectation and examination and gaze instead upon all the other things we can explore.
The September issue of Vogue is always a bigger deal for the magazine, partly for the change in season and fashion, but also because the house traditionally produces a slightly more daring, dramatic, or creative cover and this year it was something particularly special. The September 2019 cover featured the portrait shots of fifteen inspirational women, with one mirror style square left blank to show yourself as the sixteenth woman, and it was guest-edited by the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.
A fashion magazine will, of course, always be a fashion magazine but there is still a lot of manoeuvring room for new ideas and mindsets in amongst those pages and the guest editing of the Duchess of Sussex alongside editor in chief Edward Enniful led to some fantastic articles in this months issue. From the Duchess' interview with Michelle Obama; the mini-interviews with each of the cover women including Greta Thurenburg, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and author Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche; Prince Harry's conversational interview with ethologist Jane Goodard; to the Duchess' work as the patron of Smart Works charity which aims to prove clothes and coaching to unemployed women in need, the Forces for Change section of the magazine was full of thought-provoking pieces.
One of the articles that also caught my eye was by actress and activist, Jameela Jamil, titled "Come As You Are". I love the work Jamil does for self-image positivity, acceptance, and fighting for change, and in this piece, she discusses something that's still working its way up into people's minds; body neutrality. Body neutrality proposes that rather than focusing overly negatively or indeed over positively on aspects of our body and appearance that we instead simply let them be and become more neutral. It sounds simple enough but it can be hard in a society that rarely lets the little things go when it comes to appearance, weight, and image, but it definitely struck a chord with me.
Jamil is quick to comment that this isn't intended as a way to shame self-love or purposeful body positivity but something that comes from her own experiences of body image issues. She comments that any mindset that encourages a focus on the body is "just a new way for my mind to fixate on my flesh again, which is still taking up space better used for other thoughts and plans." I thought about this for a while after reading the piece and realised how much I resonated with it. As a disclaimer, if the following works for you then, of course, one hundred per cent go for it and shout it from the rooftops, but for me the whole "love stretch marks because they're lightning stripes" or I love the way this happens on my body because it's so incredible and amazing just never quite rings authentic. Why? Because it's just a body.
Yes, we should love the skin we're in and this isn't intended to reduce that by taking away any self-love but rather it's because I don't want us to have to swing from one extreme end of the scale to the other. I'd like it to simply be that stretch marks are there because that happens when you grow, that wrinkles come because that's what happens as you age and that your body is the way it is because that's how bodies exist. I'd like for us not to have to pronounce all these things as magical, wonderful signs of feminine glory that we have to exalt to high heaven to bear about ourselves when we look in the mirror but let them simply be things that happen to any body and pretty much every body. They're things we don't have to over criticise or overpraise. They're things we shouldn't have to spend so much time thinking about at all because they're just a part of us.
That's what Jamil so decisively pinpoints. "I catch every thought I'm having about my body and instantly drop kick it out of my brain. I have more important things to do," she writes. Sometimes the desperate effort to love your body that started off with such good intentions becomes just another way to scrutinise every part of yourself. Carolyn Gage wrote in The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, "You can make [a woman] frightened of puberty, frightened of sex, frightened of ageing, frightened of eating. You can terrorize her with her own body, and then she will torture herself." How true has that become of our society's continued criticism and examination of every flaw in our bodies that has settled in all of our subconsciouses and every marketed product that promises to fix that? This doesn't mean not enjoying make-up or fashion but rather dropping all the judgemental connotations that like to hang off these things. I don't want us to be scared of our bodies but I don't want us to be obsessed with them either, in whatever form that focus comes in. So perhaps body neutrality is a step in the right direction and one that invites us to set our minds free from expectation and examination and gaze instead upon all the other things we can explore.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Social Icons