Bearded Women: Stories
By Teresa Milbrodt
Four weeks later, Zip’s photo is on page seven of the local paper. He’s standing in front of the tattoo parlor beside my three-foot-high head, holding a T-shirt with the store logo on it. Me. I have to admit it came out rather nice — my black and white face looks cheerful, even attractive, and the four ears natural as the wings on a butterfly.
From the fast food manager with a beard, to the working mother with two extra ears, to a giantess who longs for love, Teresa Milbrodt takes the circus freak show into the suburbs with these stories of love, surviving the daily grind, and the prices and pleasures of never fitting in.
Bearded Women succeeds and fails by the very nature of its short story format. The diversity of physical differences examined through the first person narratives could not be done in any other way, but Milbrodt fails to completely distinguish the voices of the characters from each other. While reading, certain figures of speech and mental images would occur again and again, but in different character’s narratives. This sameness of voice built throughout the collection, until I was left with a indistinct cast of characters playing out a different facet of a single narrator.
Normally, this would be a fatal flaw in a book to me, but Bearded Women succeeds despite this flaw. The first person narrative of each of the stories puts the reader into the life of someone with a body that is other but leading an otherwise ordinary life. This juxtaposition of the strange and the familiar forces the reader to examine the inherent privilege of passing as unexceptional: a feat most of the characters in this collection must strive for or are completely incapable of.
I feel I must note that this is not a depressing book. Rather, it is a book that urges us to experience the world in another’s life for a few brief pages. In the end, it is the minutia of existence that persist. The girl who buys a day old muffin each day to see the cute girl behind the counter, the jealousy of sisters, the passing fancy of a fad of fake ears, and even a romance over paperclips stay with you as you go about your day, noticing your mostly unexceptional body.
Borrow It: It’s good. You’ll like it. Support your local library or loan your copy to friends when you’re done.
