Fading into Obscurity: Carmen Maria Machado’s "Real Women Have Bodies"
Location
Ponderosa Room D
Presentation Type
Presentation
Presentation Topic
Women's Studies, Literary Analysis
Start Date
3-3-2023 1:25 PM
Event Sort Order
34
Abstract
In her short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado tells stories about women and the various aspects of their lives. One of these stories is entitled "Real Women Have Bodies". The characters in this story are living in a society where women are fading away, more and more each day. No one knows what causes this fading, and no one seems to be doing anything about it. Machado’s story shows us the dangers of the beauty standards that society has set up for us. One day, we will not be able to meet them, and thus we will become irrelevant. This irrelevancy becomes something much more malicious in “Real Women Have Bodies” with women losing their grip on the physical world entirely. There’s a thread throughout “Real Women Have Bodies” of an inability to accept things as they are. Most of this is due to societal conditioning and the “rules” we have all grown up with. Women need the gowns that hold their faded bodies, even if they stifle them. They need to feel wanted. Need to feel useful. Need to feel pretty. There are also commentaries on protest and resistance, assimilation, care, and what we will do to make ourselves seen. Each of these topics is carefully explored and supplemented with the work of scholars such as Audre Lorde and Hil Malatino.
Fading into Obscurity: Carmen Maria Machado’s "Real Women Have Bodies"
Ponderosa Room D
In her short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado tells stories about women and the various aspects of their lives. One of these stories is entitled "Real Women Have Bodies". The characters in this story are living in a society where women are fading away, more and more each day. No one knows what causes this fading, and no one seems to be doing anything about it. Machado’s story shows us the dangers of the beauty standards that society has set up for us. One day, we will not be able to meet them, and thus we will become irrelevant. This irrelevancy becomes something much more malicious in “Real Women Have Bodies” with women losing their grip on the physical world entirely. There’s a thread throughout “Real Women Have Bodies” of an inability to accept things as they are. Most of this is due to societal conditioning and the “rules” we have all grown up with. Women need the gowns that hold their faded bodies, even if they stifle them. They need to feel wanted. Need to feel useful. Need to feel pretty. There are also commentaries on protest and resistance, assimilation, care, and what we will do to make ourselves seen. Each of these topics is carefully explored and supplemented with the work of scholars such as Audre Lorde and Hil Malatino.
Presenter Bio
Elizabeth Malousek is a Junior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is majoring in Psychology and Women's and Gender Studies with minors in English and LGBTQ studies. In the future, she plans to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology in order to be able to teach at the collegiate level. She spends most of her free time reading and reviewing books.