Kelly Ferguson
Readers of Carmen Maria Machado’s 2017 short story “Real Women Have Bodies” (of Her Body and Other Parties) would most likely not categorize it as pertaining to the body horror subgenre. Keeping in mind that the body horror subgenre often conjures images of Frankenstein-like monsters, writhing human bodies contaminated by alien forces, and, of course, buckets of disemboweled intestine and accompanying blood and gore, “Real Women Have Bodies” (RWHB), on the other hand, does not feature any of the disturbing mutations and carnage that are part and parcel with the subgenre. Rather, RWHB proffers a dystopian world where women have begun to dematerialize for no apparent reason. In other words, the body component is completely decapitated from the body horror subgenre. Still, I will argue that RWHB unlocks a different way of conceptualizing body horror by linking it specifically to the contemporary female experience in which our autonomy is constantly contested, thus engendering a horrifying reality. To do this, I will first review the tenets of the body horror subgenre and then explain how they ultimately do allow for RWHB to be considered part of the subgenre. In doing so, this article will allow for a revisiting of the definition of body horror as well as an explanation as to why the female experience is so closely related to this subgenre.
Philip Brophy is often credited with coining the term “body horror” due to his 1983 article “The Textuality of the Contemporary Horror Film,” in which he describes how then-current horror films such as The Brood (1979), Alien (1979), Scanners (1981) and The Thing (1982) consistently engage with the destruction of the body. “The contemporary horror film tends to play not so much on the fear of Death, but more precisely on the fear of one’s own body, of how one controls and relates to it” (Brophy). Brophy highlights that many of these contemporary body destruction films play with the permeability of the body or what happens when the body is invaded by a foreign element that is hellbent on its own survival and completely indifferent to the host’s mortality. In other words, these films portray the most intimate of betrayals: when the safe container of the human mind and its life-sustaining organs surrenders to freeloading vermin that are set on taking over. Still, Andrew Tudor has written that modern horror films graphically focus on death through gory representations of the body’s boundaries breaking down or, “a visible rendering incoherent of the orderly structure of the body” (28). For Tudor, the dismantling of bodily boundaries points to real world anxieties prevalent within paranoid horror films that reveal the decay, demolishment, and resignification of social limits or the social order. I understand this to mean that these films reveal the fear of social impotence or not knowing how to react and interact within one’s own world due to a lack of meaning and understanding. Likewise, Mark Jankovich has written that the body horror subgenre “deals with the crisis of identity through a concentration of processes of bodily disintegration and transformation” (112). While all these theorists may conceive of body horror slightly differently, I see their understandings of the subgenre converging around the fear of the possibility of the loss of bodily autonomy. In other words, body horror indicates the angst we feel when considering what would happen if a foreign entity breached our safe cocoon to later appropriate control. As Tudor so fittingly questions: if we cannot rely on our bodies then on what can we rely (37)?
RWHB seemingly evinces this very issue by creating a world in which women begin to evaporate into thin air without any warning or scientific explanation. This short story communicates the instability of bodily autonomy, but more specifically, female bodily autonomy, as only women’s bodies are affected by this strange phenomenon. However, Machado adroitly demonstrates that these disappearing women are simply obeying the patriarchal world around them. Throughout the story, subtle yet flippant side commentaries denote that female bodily autonomy is controversial since these cutting yet normalized critiques regarding womanly corporeality are background noise, the soundtrack of feminine existence. In this way, RWHB divulges how body horror, or the anxiety regarding the loss of bodily freedoms, is a regularized part of the female experience. In what follows, I will highlight the most insidious remarks and observations that are littered throughout the story.
Firstly, I must include that many female critics have noted that Machado’s writing highlights the horror of female subjugation/unfreedom (Rapoport, 2020; Campbell, 2019). However, it is Jill E. Anderson’s article “Her Body and Other Ghosts: Embodied Horror in the Works of Shirley Jackson and Carmen Maria Machado” that truly captures the most terrifying aspect of Machado’s work in that she stresses how imperceptible female violence can be since it is subtly woven into the ordinary background details within her stories. Anderson goes so far as to coin the term “embodied horror” to describe the latent fear that Machado’s female characters carry since they inhabit spaces that accept and excuse gendered violence against women.
It is through this very ordinariness, the insidiousness of the ways the body is forced to adapt, that horror fully engulfs Jackson and Machado’s women. …the ways characters adapt to their existential insecurity—illustrate that horror is not just an external, monstrous, othering force but also a deeply embodied and felt experience for women in their various social and domestic subjugations (32-33).
I build off this theorization by elucidating the ways in which RWHB escalates from an embodied fear of the threat of violence to the fully visible consequences that these threats have on the body over time. In RWHB, the threat of violence finally erupts, and we see the body disappearing altogether. These female eruptions into dematerialized beings demonstrate a full-on corporal takeover so common within the body horror subgenre.
RWHB features a nameless protagonist narrating her seemingly mundane life as a minimum wage salesclerk at the fashion boutique Glam. Amidst the depressing minutia of the narrator’s recession-hit actuality, she intertwines details of the disappearing women phenomenon and her budding relationship with Petra, the daughter of one of Glam’s seamstresses. Unfortunately, as their love blossoms, both women realize that Petra is fading away and will soon evaporate altogether. While societal experts are unable to ascertain the cause of the dissipating women, careful readers may note the subtly violent ways in which background characters’ harsh words and side conversations are evocative of a society that is keen on controlling and manipulating women’s bodies and ways of being.
Glam’s location within the mall offers the perfect backdrop to showcase the extent to which female reality is shaped by misogyny since the mall houses ogling males and an insidious fashion industry, as well as intentionally bad lighting and décor that enhance feminine insecurities. For example, when describing the blackhole-inspired appearance of Glam’s showroom, the narrator recites what store manager Gizzy has always told her, “The lack of colors is to show off the dresses. It terrifies our patrons into an existential crisis and then, a purchase[…]The black[…]reminds us that we are mortal and that youth is fleeting” (125). Meanwhile, our narrator reveals that younger patrons also fear aging out or appearing overly mature and not marriage worthy, through her observation of a customer’s reaction upon trying on one of Glam’s ostentatious gowns. “‘I really like this,’ says the girl with the seal hair. She looks like she just emerged from the ocean. The dress is the color of Dorothy’s shoes and has a plunging back. ‘But I don’t want to get a reputation,’ she murmurs to no one in particular” (126). Even the mother-daughter conversation she overhears in the food court manifests that female purchases are dependent on if they will evince the right type of feminine appeal. “In front of Auntie Anne’s, I stand and watch as the dough is pulled, heavy, and wet… ‘Susan,’ the mother admonishes. ‘Pretzels are junk food. They will make you fat.’ And she drags her away” (134).
These concise bites of conversation demonstrate the underlying anxiety that women may feel to conform to a “respectable” standard of femininity accorded by the male gaze. One cannot be too old and haggard in appearance, neither overly vampish, and certainly not gluttonous and extravagant–something the mother in this story “saves” her young daughter from her esurient aspirations to devour an Auntie Anne’s pretzel. In her article “The Prisoner of Gender: Foucault and the Disciplining of the Female Body,” Angela King takes a feminist approach to interpreting Michel Foucault’s foundational text Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison to discuss how power is enacted on women’s bodies specifically to control and train their inherent unruliness. She writes that throughout history females have been seen as less than vis-à-vis their male counterparts and are “…thus in perpetual need of containment and control and subjected (condemned) to particular disciplinary techniques” (30). For King, these disciplinary techniques are most often confined to the body in the form of constricting clothing and over-the-top beauty regiments, that instill an acceptable aesthetic of femininity palatable for male consumption.
The aforementioned examples describe an internalized misogyny or Anderson’s “embodied horror” amongst the women of RWHB. This embodiment results in manipulated decision-making to cohere to a male-approved form of femininity. Still, there are also examples of various jeers and jabs thrown by male characters. These provocations exemplify King’s theorizations of men believing it to be their duty to civilize women into a passible form of femininity that is pleasant for their consumption (31). The protagonist’s male co-workers, “Chris and Casey,”who work at the Sadie’s photography studio (a place where the narrator’s coworker, Natalie, notably, has never been hired despite her degree in photography (130)) across from Glam, provide a window into how even seemingly benign “friends” and colleagues can act as purveyors (and enforcers) of the patriarchal order. Glam’s female clients are subject to “rude comments” (127) from the photographers working at Sadie’s, as they hoot and howl in (dis)approval of the customers’ choices of clothing. Likewise, Chris and Casey offer our narrator their unsolicited wisdom on the ideal feminine physique. “‘Hips,’ Chris says. ‘That’s what you want. Hips and enough flesh for you to grab onto, you know? What would you do without something to hold? That’s like—like—’ ‘Like trying to drink water without a cup,’ Casey finishes” (128). The narrator reveals her surprise at the poetic nature the boys exhibit when talking about coitus before the conversation inevitably turns toward the question of what it would be like to have sex with a disappearing woman.
The only woman not subjected to the jibes and brickbats of Sadie’s photo crew is Petra, although “Casey referred to her as a dyke once during a smoke break, but he’s too afraid of her to say anything to her face” (127). King would explain that Petra’s presence is seen as threatening to these men because as a lesbian, she is especially unruly, she cannot be contained and controlled given her lack of physical need/desire for men (30).
Perhaps the most intriguing anecdote in the story comes when the narrator learns that Petra’s mother has been sewing the disappearing women into the dresses that she later sells to Glam. Although Petra’s mother tried to initially shoo them away, the fading women just kept returning as if longing for her to sew them into a new form of physicality. Petra reveals: “And those dresses do so well—they sell more than anything my mother has ever made before. It’s like the people want them like that, even if they don’t realize it” (135). Petra’s comment unmasks the grim reality behind the disappearing women. Patriarchal society strives for women to be quiet and passive yet beautiful just like the invisible women that now inhabit the dresses at Glam. The faded women have listened to and internalized the ubiquitous chauvinistic discourse resulting in their meaningless existence as being purely aesthetic, a mere fashion accessory with no voice, power, or real presence.
While RWHB dispenses a rendering of a sci-fi inspired dystopia where females are relegated to the periphery, doomed to a hand to mouth existence until they ultimately fade away, the story’s threatening atmosphere as well as the insidious ambient noise of insults, taunts, and admonishments toward women sadly mirror the body horror that women in the United States experience regularly. The most glaring assault on women’s bodily autonomy was the 2022 overturning of Roe vs. Wade which had allowed for women to make decisions about their bodies and granted access to safe abortions. However, I wonder if it is the less shocking and less apparently violent discourse surrounding women that allows for greater, or more obvious assaults on women’s rights (like that of the overturning of Roe vs. Wade). I am referring specifically to the more normalized, misogynistic rhetoric coming from the far-right that makes the U.S. landscape truly parallel the world of RWHB. We cannot easily forget that Donald Trump was still elected president of the United States even after a recording was leaked of him gloating that his star power permitted him to sexually assault (“grab ‘em by the pussy”) any woman of his choosing. America’s ability to laugh off sexual assault exploits of its most powerful leader has only made the language surrounding women’s bodily autonomy even more muddied in recent years.
On May 11, 2024, Kansas Chiefs’ kicker Harrison Butker was invited to speak at Benedictine College’s graduation commencement. Despite being surrounded by young women who had spent the last years demonstrating their mental tenacity and potential to earn a job just like the men seated next to them, Butker used his platform to reinforce the notion that the young women in the audience should put their future husbands’ success before their own, just as his wife has done for his career (Richardson). In other words, these newly minted graduates should disappear from the public sphere and instead work behind the scenes to elevate their husbands’ career ambitions. Even more recently, vice president JD Vance has come under scrutiny for a 2021 comment in which he claimed that “childless cat ladies” were running the nation and “want to make the rest of the country miserable too” (Marquez and Hernández). The subtext here is that women without children have not fulfilled their societal role and thus have no right in deciding how the country should be run. Should women without (human) children vanish from the public as well? Even with these few exemplary comments, it seems that if American women internalized the contemporary discourse of the far-right, they would evaporate like the women in RWHB. Ultimately, these misogynist musings elucidate how female bodies continue to be highly contested spaces within our patriarchal society. Women’s bodies are still under attack by alien entities vying for control as a means to their own survival, thus proving that the female experience exudes the same terror as some of the most famous and disturbing films within the body horror canon.
Works Cited
Anderson, Jill E. “Her body and Other Ghosts: Embodied Horror in the Works of Shirley Jackson and Carmen Maria Machado.” Monstrum, vol. 6, no. 2, December 2023, pp. 31-50.
Brophy, Philip. “Horrality: The Textuality of the Contemporary Horror Film.” Art & Text, no. 3, 1983.
Campbell, Jessica. “Real Women Have Skins: The Enchanted Bride Tale in Her body and Other Parties.” Marvels & Tales, vol. 33, no. 2, 2019, pp. 302-318.
Jankovich, Mark. Horror, The Film Reader. Routlege, 2002.
King, Angela. “The Prisoner of Gender: Foucault and the Disciplining of the Female Body.” Journal of International Women’s Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 2004, pp. 29-39.
Machado, Carmen Maria. Her Body and Other Parties. Graywolf Press, 2017.
Marquez, Alexandra and Alec Hernández. “JD Vance doubles down on ‘childless cat ladies’ dig: ‘I’ve got nothing against cats.’” NBC NEWS, 26 July, 2024. Accessed 12 October 2024.
Rapoport, Melanie. “Frankenstein’s Daughters: on the Rising Trend of Women’s Body Horror in Contemporary Fiction.” Publishing Research Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 4, December 2020, pp. 619-633.
Richardson, Randi. “Read a transcript of Harrison Butker’s controversial commencement speech in full.” Today, 20 May 2024. Accessed 12 October 2024.
Tudor, Andrew. “Unruly Bodies, Unquiet Minds.” Body & Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 1995, pp. 25-41.
