Being a collection which examines, through the lens of the fantastic, a myriad of issues which plague women today, Her Body and Other Parties would be incomplete without a story discussing body image and disordered eating. What was interesting to me was the choice made to approach this issue with a protagonist being an older woman, as eating disorders tend to be thought of as a “teenage girl problem.” However, according to ANAD, 13% of women over 50 struggle with eating disorders, and I’m glad Machado chose to explore this underrepresented issue.
The most intriguing relationship in the story is not to the protagonist and the bit of herself she wanted gone, so much as that of the protagonist and her daughter, Cal. We don’t see Cal much through the story, and when we do, it’s only through phone calls. She has a “roommate” she refuses to admit is a partner, she doesn’t perform “daughterly duties,” and she doesn’t have any empathy for her mother’s decision. The decision to get an unnecessary surgery in an attempt to be thin is one suggestive of a warped body image, but instead of trying to help her mother, Cal simply gets upset and lectures. The narrator tells us she’s never understood Cal’s needs, so we can assume the relationship has always been tense. Maybe our narrator did something in the past to warrant Cal’s treatment of her.
In the end, the narrator’s body comes back for her, taking care of her on her deathbed the way that most people hope their children will. Her unwanted mass could be viewed as a foil to Cal; Cal wasn’t outright rejected (that we know of), but the body was, and only the body came back for her in the end.