Women of Slender Means

By Rachel O., Friend of Con-solatio

On the first Wednesday in February, I attended a movie night hosted by Con-solatio in Brooklyn.  I have attended many of these monthly gatherings, but they have come to mean even more amidst the increased social isolation of recent years.  The opportunity to enjoy a potluck dinner, followed by a screening of “Women of Slender Means” and a discussion with the director, Allison Prete, drew many neighbors and friends seeking a companionship and stimulation that we need now more than ever. 

The evening exceeded my expectations:  “Women of Slender Means” is a documentary that chronicles the lives of 5 of the 300 women living at the YWCA in downtown Brooklyn.  The women’s stories are both ordinary and dramatic; a film that, through the eyes of a lesser director, might have been sentimental or didactic, was powerful and moving.  These women have a dignity that transcends social status, and a hard-won awareness of that dignity that their position in the world had not removed.  The chance to tell their stories allowed the women themselves, as well as the audience, to see these women’s lives as important without sentimentalizing their struggles.  It depicted the role of friendship and of faith in sustaining the women. Likewise, these monthly gatherings sustain me through a sense of belonging to a community, and deepen my sense that both friendship and faith are here, always waiting to renew me.