Page 35 - TA Magazine Winter 2022

A conversation between KATIE COURIC
going there,
and her daughter, CARRIE MONAHAN

together

ON THE OUTSIDE, KATIE COURIC seems to have it all—an iconic
career spanning four decades, a beautiful family, a bevy of awards
and opportunities that continue to crack the glass ceiling, and so
much more. In short, she’s a powerhouse.

But a closer look unveils a woman who’s just like us. Laid out in I talked about these things in a pretty
her new memoir, Going There, Couric invites readers to her past and natural way. And even though I wasn’t
22 present, as well as the journey she’s taken along the way—one that’s conscious of it, I wanted to develop a cer-
Y ANDERSON WINTER 20 down with her mother to discuss her complicated history with food body was part and parcel of that.
tain intimacy with the reader and share
equal parts raw, heartbreaking, and aspiring.
things as if I was saying them to good
friends over a glass of wine. I wanted to
unguarded. So, I think discussing my
32 In a candid conversation, Couric’s daughter, Carrie Monahan, sits have a conversation that was extremely
and body image, topics she profoundly outlines in her memoir. And
just as the title states, Couric goes there.
CARRIE: In the first chapter, you talk
diet that let you eat as many carrots as
you wanted, which ended up turning
specifically your own, in ways that subvert the male gaze. From your experience
C CARRIE MONAHAN: In Going There, you write a lot about the female body, about going on this weird “fat melter”
TRA binging and purging as a young adult, to the realities of breastfeeding, to your skin orange. Can you describe what
undergoing a breast reduction, to watching yourself get older, you write honestly that cultural atmosphere was like in the
about all of it. Was that something you set out to do or did that kind of just late ‘70s and early ‘80s? What kind of
happen during the writing process? messaging were you absorbing about
your body and how to treat it?
KATIE COURIC: I think talking about my body just happened during the writing pro-
cess. I didn’t really notice that I wrote about my body until it was pointed out in reviews. KATIE: I cut out an article when I was
a teenager that said “Female athletes are
Sharing my neuroses about my body, the pressure I felt as a young girl to conform to sexier.” When you think about the exer-
beauty standards that were impossible to achieve, and the constant dieting culture I cise craze—things like jogging, which is
witnessed growing up made me extremely conscious of my body as a young girl and what it was called back then—it really
even as an older woman. didn’t start until the mid-‘70s.

I wanted to break the illusion of bodily perfection. That’s why I wanted to talk about But I was athletic. I did gymnastics and I
the difficulties I had with breastfeeding. The fact that I had a breast reduction because ran track. I was always very sporty. But
my breasts had become uncomfortably big. One reviewer talked about body discus- ironically, I kind of gave up my athletic
sions for women as kind of an “equalizer.” pursuits and focused more on cheerleading,
which was much less athletic than it is now.

Diet culture predated even the year I was
born, 1957. If you look back at the ‘50s,
there was a lot of societal pressure for