What does the creature represent?
In “Eight Bites,” I believe the creature that haunts the narrator after her surgery represents the physical and emotional parts of herself that she has rejected, repressed, or surgically removed in the process of conforming and becoming skinny. The creature is described as silent, fleshy, and feminine. A grotesque and childlike being that mirrors the narrator’s former body and emotional weight. It’s not just a ghost of her past fat body, but also a manifestation of everything she has been taught to hate or be ashamed of (her hunger, her desires, her softness, and her pain, etc). The creature’s presence sends a message that losing weight won’t erase the psychological scars or societal pressures that are forced upon women. Even though the narrator made her body smaller, she couldn’t run away from or get rid of the guilt and shame she’s been carrying around her whole life from existing in a society that is unkind to women. This is embodied by the haunting creature. The creature may also symbolize the narrator’s unresolved trauma and self-loathing, now externalized and made visible by the removal of the external “imperfections.” It follows her silently, remoinding her that she only “fixed” her appearance but that there is nothing she can do to fix who she really is deep inside.
More widely, the creature can be interpreted by readers as being a reflection of the generational impact of body image issues. The narrator worries about passing down these harmful ideas to her daughter. The creature stands as a warning of what happens when women are taught to equate their worth with thinness or their physical appearance in general. A haunting imagery of what it’s like to be a woman chasing perfection for the sake of being accepted by society only to find out that perfection doesn’t exist and that neither they nor “society” will ever be satisfied when chasing this kind of perfection.
Machado uses the haunting presence of the creature to illustrate the psychological cost of conforming to beauty standards, showing readers that the parts we are told to fix or eliminate don’t just vanish when we go under the operating table. There is no easy fix to feel better about yourself. These feelings linger silently demanding to be acknowledged just as the creature does.
