Girl Dinner

Sloane has come to rely so much on Britt, Alex, and Priscilla. The women offer the kind of camaraderie that she hasn’t experienced in years, and Britt and Alex have the best parenting advice. They tell her to feed Isla smoothies when she won’t eat and explain that putting sprinkles on any food is a great way to convince a fussy child to take a bite. They help her to feel alive and connected for the first time since before she had Isla. 

Their beauty and their career success also prompt her to reflect on her youth: She valued herself for her appearance but also for the high grades she earned and for her ability to be the best in a variety of areas. Sloane had always experienced the need to be perfect as a distinct kind of stress, but after becoming a mother she missed it. Her life became hyper-focused on her child, and she no longer felt as though she had importance beyond her role as a mother.

Dalil is also now officially a House member, and Nina meets up with her to attend parties on frat row. At the parties, she feels sophisticated and discerning. She turns down boys she would have jumped at the chance to hook up with last year. 

Later, via Facetime, her sister Jasleen rolls her eyes at Nina’s excitement. She begins ranting about privilege even though, as Nina points out, she and Nina were both raised in the same affluent family, and she has just as much economic privilege as Nina or anyone else on campus. Jasleen adds that Nina should know better than to buy into the white supremacy of the Greek system, but Nina disagrees with Jasleen that Greek life is inherently flawed. She also disagrees with her sister’s assessment of privilege: If she has privilege, Nina feels as though it would be silly not to wield it to her own advantage.

Later, Nina attends The House’s weekly dinner. As a young American woman, Nina has grown up surrounded by diet culture. She is accustomed to the girls she knows abstaining from certain food groups entirely and counting their calories and macros. She is thus unprepared for the feast that she encounters at The House: The food is decadent and sumptuous, and each girl eats with obvious gusto. Some of the girls even appear to be salivating with pleasure. 

Astounded, she asks Tess if there are any vegetarians present or girls with food allergies. Tess laughs at this and assures her that everyone there eats everything served to them and is in perfect health. Nina admits that she has endometriosis, which gives her painful cramps. One of the neighboring girls laughs that Nina won’t be experiencing any health issues in the near future. Nina is puzzled by this comment and has no idea what the girl could mean.

Sloane quickly warms to Arya, her TA, and tells him about her recent appointment as The House’s faculty advisor. She is surprised to learn that he has a family friend in The House: Nina Kaur. The two chat about Greek life as they work in Sloane’s office and she realizes that she is grateful for his presence on campus. 

Later, another typical weekend passes and Sloane reflects on her marriage. Max has never struggled to maintain boundaries or carve out space for alone time. He used to spend each Saturday morning on a long bike ride even though Sloane would have loved the chance to go out to brunch, stop by the farmers’ market, or spend some slow family time together. He no longer bikes on Saturday mornings and he is almost always home, but he tends to spend his free hours watching television or reading. He can usually be found in their house’s common areas, but he isn’t truly present. Sloane feels as though she still spends her Saturday mornings alone.

When she confides this, as well as how hard she finds it to balance motherhood and her career, to Alex, Alex seems to immediately understand. Alex bemoans the patriarchy in all its forms: She asserts that Sloane’s past research, on “unruly women” in history, is unappealing to her department chair at the University because it centers women and bitterly recounts how much time she has been forced to spend golfing because that is where deals are actually made in her world. As they talk, Sloane feels alive and intellectually curious for the first time in ages, and an idea begins to take hold.

Nina and Jasleen have another call and disagree again. Jasleen is sure that the world is fundamentally unfair to women and worries that there is no way for women to truly advance. Nina suggests spending less time on social media and choosing a career path other than non-profit work. She argues that the best way to overcome the gender pay gap is to find a lucrative job. With money as security, the world’s problems might not seem so insurmountable to Jasleen. Jasleen fires back that Nina has chosen to become a “sellout” and that Jasleen would rather find a career that would allow her to do good.

Later, Nina attends a party. She realizes that these functions, although the booze is free-flowing and the girls’ outfits skimpy, are ultimately part of the broader networking culture of the Greek system. She is there in part to look attractive and maybe hook up with a guy, but she is also building the kind of connections that could someday be beneficial to her in her career. 

Nina and Fawn share a charged exchange, during which Fawn admits to being bisexual. Later Nina and Dalil also share a moment of sexual tension. Nina reflects that Jasleen might not get it, but being in a sorority is its own kind of empowerment.

Sloane meets with The House’s alumnae association. The women are beautiful, polished, and well-groomed. Sloane marvels at the lack of grey hair and crow’s feet and reflects that these women are exactly what she would have expected based both on The House’s current student members and Alex, Priscilla, and Britt. 

Sloane and the women have a warm conversation in which Sloane shares details about her work and Isla, and then Alex clarifies what Sloane’s role will be. They envision her as a mentor who will steer the girls toward career, ambition, and self-determination. She mentions the girls’ interest in a VidStar page called The Country Wife, run by one of The House’s alumna. She asserts that such pages encourage young women to idealize a bygone era during which they actually had fewer choices and less autonomy. Sloane gasps inwardly: She obsessively follows The Country Wife and constantly compares her own life to that of its creator.

Later, Sloane pores over social media thinking about a recent conversation with Alex during which they discussed Freud’s “Madonna-whore” dichotomy, the idea that in patriarchal societies women are divided into those who follow the rules and conform to norms of gender and sex, and those, the “whores,” who do not. Many of the women from the alumna group have glossy social media pages and an online presence that suggests they are parenting gurus. She reflects on parenting trends and the impact of social media on culture. 

She asks Arya what he thinks about accounts like The Country Wife, and he posits that the “trad wife” era was a backlash against the “girl boss” era and the rise and fall of the wellness industry. Sloane wonders about The House: It seems to view itself as an incubator for independent career women, but many of its alumna are passionate mothers. However, she adds to herself, they are mothers who run glamorous social media pages that make their lives seem effortlessly chic and aesthetically perfect.

Nina’s pledge class nears its initiation day. Dalil continues to wryly critique The House, pointing out that the entire initiation ritual is, actually, just a hoop to jump through to gain access to The House’s social world and not a mythological, life-altering mystery. 

During one night of official bonding with the rest of The House’s new girls, Dalil suggests sharing the worst thing each of the girls has done. Nina admits to wanting to sleep with her philosophy professor, and when that admission is deemed too tame, she shares that she is also sexually attracted to Fawn. The girls counter that Fawn seems attracted to Nina too, and Nina tries to hide the thrill this information gives her. 

When they all ask why she chose to rush as a sophomore and not a freshman, however, Nina balks at admitting the truth. Instead she shares that she wasn’t ready freshman year, that she was too caught up in the unfairness of the University’s patriarchal culture. She shares that she spent the entire year wanting to be noticed and deemed worthy, but also that she wanted power.