This is an essay I wrote on an especially intriguing short story I read for my Fashion & Fabric class at Barnard. Honestly, the first time I read "Real Women Have Bodies", it didn't leave an impression on me, and I was confused at its purpose. But after conversations and a deeper dive into what lies beyond the words, much like looking into the seams of a dress, it has had a profound impact not just on my academic curiosity but also on my fashion journey. This story inspired the collection that I'll be showing at the Columbia University Fashion Show in November. More details to come soon in Part II of this blog post! Here is Dressed to Fade: Imagery in Machado’s “Real Women Have Bodies” by me.
Xoxo, Anna Yang
“Real Women Have Bodies” by Maria Machado uncovers an epidemic of women becoming invisible and the aftermath of them being sewn into prom dresses. Before delving into the history of fading, the romantic relationship between the two women, and the narrator’s journey to uncover the truth, Machado introduces the story with a scene of a girl and her mother shopping in the dress store, Glam. Through detailed descriptions that utilize the imagery of pop culture icons, water, and food, Machado foreshadows the faded women sewn into the dresses and conveys the doomed destiny of the consumers who wear them.
The dresses are named after pop cultural icons or mythological creatures, full of metaphorical meaning, symbolizing the different identities that the mother-daughter duo uses to try to fit into the right beauty ideal. The girl first tries on a dress that she “really [likes]” in red, the color of “Dorothy’s shoes” (126). However, because it has a “plunging back”, the girl dismisses the dress since looking like “Jane Russell from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” could give her a “reputation” (126). The description of the dress employs two characters from vastly different worlds: one from a children’s story and the other a sultry character from a Hollywood classic. With the color of red as the connecting string, this dichotomy between the virgin and the slut demonstrates the entrapment of the male gaze and the expectation of the patriarchy for a woman to be both innocent and also to appeal sexually. The dress embodies two characters at once, highlighting the impossible beauty standards the girl attempts to achieve. As the mother and daughter go on to sift through more dresses, each one is named and described after women with tragic endings. There is the “Ophelia”, named after Ophelia from Hamlet, who drowns due to madness caused by the men in her life (126). Another dress, “Emma Wants a Second Chance”, is perhaps a reference to Emma Bovary from Madame Bovary, who took her own life by swallowing arsenic after being disillusioned by her marriage and failed affairs (126). Departing from the pop cultural and literary references, one dress is named after the mythical creature “The Banshee”, a female spirit who foretells death, originating from Irish folklore (126). The descriptions of dresses through these devastating figures almost give the garments a life of their own, or more, they represent the spirits of the faded women sewn into them. Additionally, as the girl eventually finds a dress or a character that she is satisfied with, she joins the pattern of being subjected to socially approved beauty standards. By physically wearing the dress, the girl metaphorically merges with the faded women who inhabit it. Her own potential disappearance is then foreshadowed by the tragic fate of the figures that inspired the dress' name. Although readers may not yet understand the morbid creation of these pieces, Machado already conjures an eerie feeling by utilizing contradictory and ill-fated women in the descriptions of the dresses.
Machado uses water metaphors throughout the entire story, but most densely in this passage when she describes the dresses the mother and daughter look through. From the “mermaid cuts in salt-flat white” and “trumpet style in algae red”, to the “netting the color of frosted sea glass”, the water and ocean-like descriptions suggest that the fading women are within the dresses, like evaporated droplets (126). Water is vulnerable and also enduring, like the women who disappear but whose spirits are never erased, even when their bodies are gone. One could read the liquid form as a kind of liberation, as water flows through wherever it wants without confinement; however, in this case, the women are contained, only able to move within the dress. Exclusively going through cycles of evaporation, transpiration, condensation, and precipitation, without dissipating, water symbolizes the ever-lasting spirits of the faded women and how the girls who wear the dress may enter into the same containment, extending generationally. Using ocean-like imagery, Machado suggests the presence of invisible women sewn inside them and the fate of future girls who risk becoming one with the water cycle alongside them.
In contrast with the water metaphors, the dresses are also described using words associated with food, painting a palatable image as if the dresses are consumable. At first look, details such as the busts being “crunchy” or the colors compared to “early-morning buttercream or overripe cantaloupe” seem arbitrary. However, food descriptions are instilled here to convey the idea of the dresses literally expected to be consumable, and even nourish the young shoppers. Building on the previous imagery of water, where women become undesirable, transparent, and fade into a state of liquid to be sewn into dresses, the food descriptions added now symbolize the transformation of these women into solid objects again, now purely to be consumed by shoppers and society as sustenance. In turn, the girls who buy and wear the garments take on the association of the dress with all their frilliness, lace, and traditionally feminine qualities, their beauty becoming consumable for the male gaze. The dresses described using food imagery are like lures that trap girls, first attracting them to consume the garment, then eventually taking over, turning them into objects to be consumed.
Ultimately, Machado’s imagery of pop culture icons, water, and food undoubtedly impacts the reader’s perceptions of the dresses, foreshadowing the unsettling truth of the faded women revealed later. The dresses act as vessels connecting the women shoppers and the faded women, where both sides voluntarily choose to become one with the dress, whether wearing it or becoming it. The stitches holding the faded women in the dresses are in the details, undone by dissecting the imagery. By embedding these layers into seemingly trivial descriptions of dresses, Machado reveals how the cycle of female objectification and disappearance is threaded into everyday life, whether one can see it or not. The opening scene thus prepares readers for the rest of the story and the argument that women’s bodies are not only erased but absorbed into the very symbols of femininity meant to adorn them.
Read Real Women Have Bodies by Maria Machado here
Work Cited
Machado, Maria. “Real Women Have Bodies.” Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2017, pp. 125–148.