Jell-O Girls Quotes

“The curse. When my mother was a child, it was used to explain all manner of familial misfortune. Death, alcoholism, wealth and the existential boredom it brought with it. It was, she was told, confined to men and therefore nothing for her to worry about. All she had to do was stay cute, stay pretty, stay silent. Later she understood these admonitions were the curse. The curse wasn’t confined to men; it came from them, from a social structure predicated on their power. The curse was the silence impressed upon her, her mother before her, and countless women before them. The curse was the sickness that silence becomes when swallowed, lumps of unspoken words ticking like bombs. Our task was to reclaim and speak, to take up space with our bodies and our voices. This is how we save ourselves, my mother constantly reminded”
― Allie Rowbottom, JELL-O Girls: A Family History

“Most nights we sat together at the kitchen table, a bowl of wobbly pink in the space between us, spooning it into our mouths as we tallied up the day’s intake. I always beat her. The game, for me, was easy. When she dropped out, I continued. I felt victorious. I felt I had somehow won proof of whatever it was that would spare me her fate, imperfect and discarded by my father, a man, whose gaze defined us both.”
― Allie Rowbottom, JELL-O Girls: A Family History

“This was every woman’s function: to be the piece that held the family, the culture, the country, together.”
― Allie Rowbottom, JELL-O Girls: A Family History