In “Real Women Have Bodies,” Carmen Maria Machado once again takes parts of the female experience and spins them together to create another horror story. A dress shop worker begins a relationship with the daughter of one of the shop’s biggest suppliers, Petra. Meanwhile, the world is facing an unknown phenomenon. Women’s bodies are slowly disappearing, losing their corporeal forms and drifting around while barely being seen by those around them. No one knows how this is caused or what’s causing it, but soon men in media begin blaming the women to whom this is happening. “They are talking about how we can’t trust the faded women. women who can’t be touched but can stand on the earth, which means they must be lying about something, they must be deceiving us somehow.
“I don’t trust anything that can be incorporeal and isn’t dead,” one of them says” (146). For me, this struck a chord in how often we resort to victim-blaming when something bad happens to women. We cause things to happen to us and have to behave a certain way to keep ourselves. Even when we have no control, like losing your corporeal body would be, it’s still our fault. Despite the fantastical nature of the story, the blame being put onto the disappearing women is something that is relatable.
The one part I found most disturbing was to learn that some of these whisps are having themselves stitched into the dresses, and we know they still feel pain as they are heard crying out when they are stitched into these dresses. It reminded me of the statement of “beauty is pain” that entered my mind when reading that part. But at the same time to me, it felt believable. Already there is so much pressure to alter your body to look a certain way that the idea of stitching a dress to yourself to remain seen doesn’t feel like too much of a stretch
The protagonist’s own relationship comes to tragedy when her lover begins disappearing. It’s painful seeing her and Petra facing this together knowing that is inevitable. The panic she feels when Petra goes for a run and she thinks she’s already disappeared shows the love and care that has been developed. This is coupled with the mental break she has when Petra does disappear. The breakdown the narrator is having feels like a reflection on the insane expectations of beauty standards pushed on women at such an early age can destroy the minds of women and girls. How even when we push back against them, these standards don’t move and never seem to.