This image is a perfect representation of the short story “ Eight Bites” where the narrator’s identity seems to be established within her family as her mother, her sisters, and her daughter play a role in the woman she becomes. This image displays the conflict of the ideal body of a woman from two perspectives– the perfect “body” supported by societal expectation versus the perfect body that is realistic. The narrator struggles with the external image she presents to the world; she does not want others to see her as a fat woman but rather as normal like her mom and her sisters, who have undergone gastric bypass surgery. However, her daughter has the same body type as her and appreciates her curves while expressing her differ in opinion on the narrator’s idea of irreversible surgery. When describing her current body, she says she didn’t get her body from her mom because her mom “ always looked normal, not hearty or curvy or Rubenesque or Midwestern or voluptuous, just normal” (Machado, 3). By using the word normal, there is an emphasis placed on non-voluptuous bodies being acceptable as the standard by society, while implying that voluptuous bodies are the opposite. This explains the cultural mindset that the women in the story have adopted prompting them to commit to the surgery that will help them shed the fat they viewed as a burden.
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