Ravisher Singh Professor Mark Harrison English 1B 8th October 2014 Becoming the Red Dress This poem focuses on the stereotypes woman face and explains how women in this poem try to endure those stereotypes. Red color stands for sex. Red roses, red lipstick, red lingerie and red heart boxes of candy, all of these represent one single image of passionate love and sex. Women in this this poem has been portrayed confident and strong. Boldness of red color makes it a statement color which stands for power and passion. Addonizio in her poem, “What Do Women Want?” not only expresses women’s desire for a red dress. In fact, the red dress stands for something much deeper. Through attitude, imagery and figurative language the speaker’s desire to stand …show more content…
“Red dress” sets her apart from everyday life and makes her feel unique; she wants to get treated like red dress, highly desirable thing in world and make her stands out of the crowd. In the next line “I want it to confirm/your worst fears about me, / to show you how little I care about you” (17-9), speaker shows her arrogant attitude that is fearless. The word “You” here is used for man in general, although speaker doesn’t make it clear who “you” is. You can be her ex-boyfriend or society but ultimately speaker here trying to say that she really doesn’t care about whomever this “you” is .Society places lot of restrictions on women. Rules of society are that a woman isn’t supposed to show too much skin or her inner sexual feelings as it is considered slutty The speaker of the poem wants to show that she does not care about them a bit and their worst fears about her are true in real life. The line “Or anything except what/ I want (19)” clearly emphases that all her desires are for herself only. She is independent, fearless and desirous and all her desires are meant for herself …show more content…
She expressed to keep her identity with her till her death as she says “it’ll be the dress she’s buried in.” Red dress stands for both her body and herself together and she wants to hold her independence and attitude till her death. She desires how she wants red dress to show what she wants to be known as. She is showing the world her actual self so that so can become free in her own skin. The reader of the poem can easily picture the speaker’s keenness when she anxiously pushing aside clothes on a rack and pulling that red dress off the hanger. The speaker goes on to say that she will wear it like a body to carry her into the world, like bones, like skin. In other words, she’s going to wear that dress like it is part of her. As if the dress makes her up. It’s at this point in the poem that the reader can see that the desires she wants to come from the dress are really very intense and deep. She wants to wear it as if it’s literally what she is made up of it. Speaker ends the poem with that fabulous last line about how it’ll be the dress she’s buried in. That has to be only red dress to be buried