The theme of feminism in “Stop Your Women’s Ears with Wax” is prevalent from the start of the story. This is the inverse idea of girls fawning over boy bands in the same way they fangirl over this all-girl band. The main part of the story, however, is focused more on the violence the fans cause as the tour progresses throughout each of the cities. “Then later, when she left, she went two streets down to a bar she wasn’t old enough to get into and drive a knitting needle through the bouncer’s eye.” (pg. 96) The fantastic has not exactly been introduced yet, as it is more subtle than the other stories read in class. However, the fantastic begins to seep slowly into the story.
The girls appear to have become demonic creatures throughout the story, slowly causing more and more chaos and death towards the men who disregard the women of the story. The story has recurring images throughout. These images are feathers, orange t-shirts, blood, death, and revenge. In one instance, a chip shop worker greets the band member with indifference as he has no particular reason to care and at the end of the story there is,
“In a blurry clip, one can just make out the boy in the chip-shop window, the way he moves his hands up at the breaking of the frontage glass. In a thick swathe, the girls reach out for him, grabbing at his legs and neck and elbows, pulling him out through the window. The clip ends shortly after that, before the screaming and the rending, the camera swinging away to capture the mass of a thousand girls all racing forward down the street, the crooked note of music in the air.” (Pg.102)
The band clearly has some power over the girls who listen to their music. This story is similar to “Dangerous Laughter” in many ways. In “Dangerous Laughter” the kids were obsessed with laughter to the point it resulted in one girl’s death. In Stop Your Women’s Ears with Wax, the obsession leads to many people’s deaths and injuries. The main difference between these two stories is that the death of Clara changed the story. In “Stop Your Women’s Ears with Wax” there is no change in the obsessed.