Bits #8
Things to read, watch, listen to
This column by Philippa Perry, who gives a reader with breast cancer permission to get angry, really moved me. Start with a dial, she says. And “remember that anger is on your side, it’s a useful emotion.” She recommends Soraya Chemaly’s Rage Inside Her, to which I’d also add, on the cultural history (or rather, suppression) of female anger, Clementine Ford’s Fight Like A Girl.
A new term I learned this week: phoenixing. Not just a dodgy financial practise1, according to new book Make It Make Sense: The Bedside Table Essential For Women In Their Twenties from the creators of Shit You Should Care About, it also means to rise from the ashes of a particularly turbulent time. Has broad application. For eg: “love to see you phoenixing!” or “go forth and phoenix!”. Into it.
How the heck did Couples Therapy pass me by? It’s been going for 4 critically acclaimed series, but I only came to it recently through this fascinating (and very long, very knotty) conversation, which then led me to this profile on the show’s charismatic psychoanalyst, Dr Orna Guralnik (she’s also done an episode of Call Her Daddy) and then, wondering if I’d have the same conflicted thoughts to it as I did to Lori Gottlieb’s book, I tuned it to the show, which is available on iPlayer. Reader, I was hooked.
Not all couples can hold a screen: I could have watched a whole series of just Desean/ Elaine and Mau/ Annie, while I skipped most of series 2. The most compelling story for me so far has been that of Christine and Nadine from series 3, who, as queer women growing up in conservative middle-eastern families during times of conflict, have trauma bonded to one another - a careful Guralnik coaxes them to a place of surprising and joyful revelation.
I am completely baffled as to why anyone would want to lay bare their pettiest and/or most painful erotic vulnerabilities on television - I’d rather take part in Shattered than this - but I find Guralnik’s psychoanalysis - her entire being - so compelling and calming. And unlike with Gottlieb’s book, I don’t have to wonder what is or isn’t true. There are no composite characters here.
The next overdue therapy content I intend to consume is Esther Perel’s wildly popular podcast. (I loved her book Mating in Captivity and found this piece on her new desire masterclass really interesting.) I struggle with podcasts, as I’m very much a visual learner over an auditory one - hence why I don’t listen to audio books. Can anyone recommend their fave eps to ease me in? (I’ve just seen she’s done one with Miranda July!)
I cannot stop looking at this soulful, pastel rendering of the late, great poet, actor and writer Benjamin Zephaniah (who I was lucky enough to interview for What Writers Read a few years ago - he talked about how bell hooks awakened him to feminism) by 12-year-old Izaan Ahmed, who won The People’s Choice award at The Royal Academy’s Young Artists’ Summer Show. What incredible young talent. And what a beautiful homage to Zephaniah.
A great piece by Jessica Grose, who writes a consistently good parenting column for The New York Times, on the false moral value assigned to being a parent - specifically “the family man” defence. Last week, Sean Combs (aka P Diddy) was arrested for racketeering and sex trafficking charges and, Grose notes, his legal team’s main defence is that he is “an adoring father”. It is perfectly possible to be an adoring father/ mother/ grandmother/ dog owner and also, an abhorrent person. Two things can be true at once! People contain multitudes (of good and bad.)
Writes Grose:
“For as long as we have had mass media, celebrities — both men and women — have used their families as a means of image rehabilitation and a way to deflect from run-ins with the law and general bad press… Perhaps the most famous example of the rot behind the facade of a happy family is Joan Crawford, who posed for glossy photo shoots with her children while privately abusing them2, as described in her daughter Christina’s memoir, “Mommie Dearest.”