When We Lost Our Heads

by Heather O'Neill

He had been told by a doctor that the best cure for nervous anxiety in women was to take them out to the fresh air. They could sit in the sunshine and wiggle their toes and not worry about fashion.

She had to swallow her pride. And she experienced the effect of digesting it. Her shame was absorbed in every part of her body. She felt it in her toes. The female body was particularly absorbent when it came to shame. If you wrung out any woman’s body, you would discover it was soaked in shame.

Mary had to take all the thoughts she had come to the factory with, remove them from her head, and put them in the small locker at the front where she put her coat and boots. As soon as she was done with work, she would run to her locker, wrap her scarf around her neck, and tuck her thoughts back in her head in order to think them.

Didn’t they know? Their characters were both too strong. There was just no way they would ever be able to coexist peacefully. They could either resume their explosive love affair that would somehow bring down everyone around them or they ought to be on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

The world is terrified of a certain type of monstrous woman. That’s why they invented these ideas of ugly and beautiful. They say we are beautiful now because we are young and stupid. But the more we accomplish and have to say, the uglier we are described as being.”