Raping the Fantasy

“Rape Fantasies” by Margaret Atwood looks at first as a humorous short story about a group of friends who use to chat every day but, as the reader starts analyzing the story deeper, one can find several traces of patriarchal oppression underneath the chat going between the women in the story. Using rape as the central point in the story, Margaret Atwood addresses the topics of media taking control and shaping the minds of women, different stereotypes associated to women, the power struggle between men and women and the idea of voicing as a means of liberation from patriarchal oppression.

Even when magazines are only mentioned at the beginning of the short story, they are a tool of patriarchy. The magazine is a construction –just as femininity –made by patriarchy to have control over women of different ages. If we analyze the different magazines that are targeted to women we can find different “techniques” to become more attractive to men, to be better mothers, girlfriends, cooks, and etcetera. Atwood criticizes all these ideas of how the female should be and what she should do to become “perfect” to the eyes of men. By using Estelle as her voice, she criticizes the way magazines put these different notions inside women’s minds as “they put it in capital letters on the front cover, and inside they have these questionnaires like the ones they used to have about whether you were a good enough wife or an endomorph or an ectomorph” (Atwood, 1). Thus, magazines not only tell you about how to be a good enough wife, that is your how to fulfill your role in the private sphere so that men are pleased, but also let you know what your body type is so you can go on a diet effectively and become more attractive to men. Sondra’s lunch exemplifies the latter point. Her lunch is a piece of celery and “she always brings” one (Atwood, 1). Sondra has internalized the idea that society imposes on women through mass media: That of being thin to be attractive. Many women are controlled...