"Witches: What Women Do Together by Sam George-Allen" | Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44162881-witches
"I have been watching a lot of Call the Midwife. A BBC drama that started in 2012, the show is based on a memoir of the same name by nurse and midwife Jennifer Worth, who cut her teeth working in London's impoverished East End during the baby boom of the 1950s. When I tell people that I've been watching the show, a lot of them scoff. I have started asking them why they are so dismissive (none of the scoffers have watched an episode, of course.) They tend to have trouble articulating it. I have started articulating it for them: is it because it's a show about women's stuff? This tends to finish the conversation."
Page 141 of "Witches" by Sam George-Allen
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"At the dance class in Byron Bay, a move requires us to partner up. One dancer must execute a 360-degree spin, right arm extended, while the other drops dramatically into a squat so that the arm sails over their head. It is by far the best part of the routine, not just because of the incipient danger of copping a forearm to the face, but because we are deliberately partnered with total strangers. I enjoy communicating in this elegant, unfamiliar way; together, we make our our bodies legible, we create something, however ungainly.
Beyond the satisfaction of not blackening anyone's eye, though, I don't take as much as I'd hoped from the class. We are gathered on the brick tile floor of a beachfront pub, and bemused Saturday morning punters are watching us over the rims of their mid-strength beers. I am sweaty and self-conscious. I feel fat.
At home that evening, I try to perform some of the routine we learned in front of the mirror. I look ridiculous. Groove Therapy always operates without mirrors, which is a smart move, as I'd immediately have gathered my things and left had I seen how stupid I looked during class. It felt good to move my body and to learn and remember the steps (and to swing my arm wildly without concussing anyone), but trying to recreate those moves in the mirror feels dreadful, like a cruel prank. I wanted to have a revelation in that pub, surrounded by fifty other women lifting their feet and sweating through their activewear. But it will take more than one class to dislodge my gaze from the outside of this weird, awkward body, and put it back where it belongs: in here, looking out."
Page 92 - 93 of "Witches" by Sam George-Allen
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