"Real Women Have Bodies" by Carmen Maria Machado
Found in Machado's collection, Her Body and Other Parties
IDs: Queer, Sapphic, Terminal Illness/Degenerative Disease
Author IDs: Bisexual, Latinx/Latine, Fat
In “Real Women Have Bodies,” Machado explores queer disability in a specifically speculative form. The story explores a phenomenon called “fading,” in which women’s bodies are “fading” out of existence. However, these women don’t completely disappear. Instead, a wisp of them remains in the world--only visible if one strains their eye. The cause of this fading is unknown, and its targets seem to share only their identities as women. The story focuses on an unnamed narrator and her relationship with a woman named Petra in this world of fading. About halfway through the story, Petra herself begins to fade. The fading process appears to take at least a few weeks, and our narrator brings us along through her and Petra’s relationship as Petra fades. Machado’s “fading” phenomenon creates space for a simultaneously embodied and imagined representation of queer disability. While “fading” is not a recognizable disability in our reality, Machado treats it as if it is. Therefore, we as readers witness an embodied account of fading that shares many traits with degenerative diseases or chronic illnesses that exist within our reality.