Danielle Pender’s short story collection Watching Women and Girls is an immensely fun, biting, and hot new addition to the list of books by and about women. The 12 stories in the collection present the myriad ways in which the world looks at women and women look at themselves. This gaze is often confused and repulsed by what it sees – the excesses are unpleasant and standards of perfection are impossible to achieve.
Every story is centred around the feminine experience. The first-world setup is hardly an impediment to the reading experience. Instead of making overtly political commentary, Pender settles on the interpersonal relationships of women and their complicated understanding of their selves to comment on the social cultures that feed on a woman’s insecurities to keep her in check.
Every girl has been told to observe her surroundings carefully from an early age. We are taught to scan for danger, be wary of strange looks, bat away an unwelcome touch. Conversely, this constant state of vigilance also props us up to be observed and judged by others. In so doing, we find ourselves reflected in strangers, our stories told back to us through the lives of other women.
Womanhood through the ages
Danielle Pender makes the women in her stories – and the readers – simultaneously the observer and the observed. She offers us a varied but relatable cast of characters that reminds us how universal some experiences of womanhood can be. The stories encapsulate the lives of young girls to elderly women as they confront the issues of sexual abuse, romantic love, motherhood, career, and death and loss. The stories hold their ground and do not get swept by the one that follows. In the end, Pender prepares the reader for the multitude of experiences that a woman will experience in her lifetime – including those that she’ll re-live through the lives of her daughters and granddaughters.
The collection opens with “Window Display” – a story about the perenially relevant theme of older men preying on young women. Now out of it and a mother to a girl child, a woman remembers her own past of being in a controlling, unhappy relationship as she watches something similar play out on the table next to her at a cafe.
The second story, “Three Sisters”, is a classic family drama that reaches its climax at a wedding ceremony. The jitters about the nuptials and the resurfacing of age-old wounds bring out the worst – and best – of the relationship between the three sisters.
In “Bar Italia”, a seemingly well-adjusted, married middle-aged woman has affairs during her work trips. They are dissatisfying and short-lived. Life-long body image issues result in low self-esteem and an endless cycle of disillusionment about bodily autonomy. Similarly, in “Look at Me Mummy,” Pender writes about how early in life women are taught to hate their bodies. The devotion we feel for our bodies in childhood is replaced with a deep disdain by the time we hit puberty, thus, setting off a lifelong chain of discontentment and unhappiness.
In “Junction 64”, minimum wage workers at a burger joint drive each other up the wall as they struggle to serve customers and steer clear of workplace drama while trying to make ends meet with whatever little they make.
A dominatrix becomes a male professor’s sole emotional support in “Lego” when he seeks her services after a rough divorce. Her strict insistence on keeping things professional is not heeded as the man grows increasingly reliant on her for affection and companionship.
In the company of women
Losing a friend is a heartbreak, especially if it is your childhood friend who dies prematurely. “Paper Dolls” is a moving portrait of a woman going to her childhood home and rediscovering her dead friend through material memories.
In “Next Gen”, a young woman thinks she has found a mentor in a senior at her workplace and tries to befriend her. However, when she accidentally overhears a conversation between her mentor and another colleague, she realises few places are as brutal as a workplace.
My favourite story in the collection, “The Cat”, is a scathing observation of the always-online generation’s dating culture. The presence of a cat, a woman’s true best friend, complicates matters for a young woman whose date begins to act weird when he discovers the animal in her house.
The short story “Women of Pret” plays out like a documentary on young mothers as they grapple with keeping their babies alive while simultaneously worrying about socialising, having a career, and being desirable wives to their husbands. In the end, the adage “it takes a village to raise a child” is proven right once again as the women realise they only have each other to preserve their sanity.
In “Single Serve”, we follow a woman who is so conditioned by cinema and the rigid standards of perfectionism set by it that the most horrifying thing to happen to her would probably be not getting to experience a similar cinematic extravagance in real life.
The final story, “Self Portrait”, is an elegant end to the collection. An elderly lesbian couple’s journey from loving in secret to being together until death is yet another reminder of how hard-fought queer rights are – and the still-long road ahead for dignity and justice.
Pender’s determined focus on the experiences of women is her greatest strength. The raw, humane stories about women’s sufferings and joys make for a visceral reading experience that stuns, horrifies, and makes you laugh in turns.
Watching Women and Girls, Danielle Pender, 4th Estate/HarperCollins Publishers.
