The fifth story in “Her Body & Other Parties,” “Real Women Have Bodies,” is a vividly described, genuinely distressing narrative that showed how harsh speculative fiction can be. The story is told from the point of view of a young woman whose name or identity is never given. The imagery is as striking as the message, which is unapologetically harsh.
The story talks about a plague that takes over America. No one knows how this plague is spread or why it makes the women affected go from the solid human form, to slowly fading away. The first time the narrator comes in contact with these women she realizes that “…the room is full of women. Women like the one in the viral video, see-through and glowing faintly, like afterthoughts.”
The meaning of the faded but not completely gone woman can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. They seem to be driven into seclusion in part by a society that respects them only when they are associated with items of beauty. To me, it appears to be a form of rejection that is intensified. Overall, it seems that women are lost, which leads me to believe that this is a parallel to America’s rape culture and normalization for misogyny. While everyone is aware of the plague in general, they refuse to consider the truth until it affects them or someone they know.
