In Juila Armfield’s “Mantis,” the mother of the girl keeps trying to make her pretty and beautiful. An Avon sales lady sells cosmetics to them to make them beautiful, and even the girls at the Catholic school are worried about their appearance. To me this story is about how as children we do not care much about our appearance, but as we get older the pressure of how we look gets stronger from our family members. We are born with our genes that we get from our family, but we want to look better than other females to get the attention of our loved ones.
In the story, the girl sheds her skin, hair, and teeth, representing how young girls’ bodies change as they move through adolescence into adulthood. We change, and we judge our bodies because these changes are unfamiliar and everything is growing. We face more issues than we’d faced as children. We experience anger, lust, appearance, sadness, self-esteem, and the desire for popularity, self-awareness, and self-esteem.
I read “Beasts” by Samantha Hunt. A woman has ticks on her body and her husband takes the ticks off of her. At night the woman turns into a deer after she makes out with another man in a nightclub. To me it is about secret’s that we keep from others. Her husband has secrets, and it wasn’t until years after they were married that she found out that he was nice guy, wonder and a great singing voice. She cheated on her husband and is keeping that a secret from him.
Even after years of marriage she felt lust from another man, and she liked it. When we crave sex, we let our animals out and we are no longer humans. We have to keep our sex life secret during the day and at night is when we let our animals out to play. Sometimes we are afraid to show our true selves to even the person we are close to because we do not want them to leave.
I read “Fatso“ by Etgar Keret. Two people had been dating for a while and the guy does not believe that the secret that the woman is hiding is a big deal. He goes through different scenario in his head about her secret and he there to comfort her. When she does turns into a fat man at night in his arms, he is shocked. The guy loves the woman no matter what and they stay together for a long time.
When you love someone, you love them no matter who or what they look like, and this story is about that. We use our imagination when someone says they need to tell us something and, in our heads, it is not a big deal, and we are okay with everything. When we finally tell or show who we are to our significate other we want them to stay and accept us but sometimes they leave us. When they do accept us, we can be ourselves with them and they are okay with that because they love us and know we are not perfect.
Your take on Fatso was something that I had not considered. It is true that when we open up to someone there is the possibility of being rejected and our significant other leaving us. It is very rare to find someone who you can open up the deepest part of yourself with, and that is exactly what the woman in this story did.