Anneland?

Debbieland by Aimee Bender is one of those stories you really have to think about. It almost seems unreal. From a dominant/patriarchal point of view one might not believe what they are reading because it isn’t what you typically expect. It is unclear but the narrator is a girl from a group of girls and she always refers to them as we. The story is about this group of punks who decide to beat up a girl who they think is called “Debbie”. They apparently beat her up because seeing her makes them sick. It could also be that “Debbie” is a lower class geek/nerd? But they do notice a lot of things about her for some reason like “She is trying, always, to lose weight.” And other things like “All day long, she has been in love with her legs swishing underneath the skirt, with how the tassels tickle her ankles.”

It isn’t stated but they planned out what they were going to do, one girl wore all of her rings, another girl talked her up, and the others waited outside. They ripped off “Debbie’s” skirt and beat her until she was bleeding. Is this really something that females do? In the process of everything they even had time to notice that “Debbie” was wearing a knockoff underwear. End of that story, they are in college now and they meet this new girl. They call her the one with the eyebrows. This girl is probably up to date with all the fashion and she takes care of her appearance I guess the opposite of “Debbie.” The narrator person hooks up with her and then the eyebrow girl breaks up with the narrator. This is one of the things that makes it difficult to interpret whether the narrator is a male or female but seeing how she has female friends you have to assume she is a female.

After the breakup is when this “Debbie” character appears again and talks to them in a coffee shop. “Debbie” asks them why they beat her up and then they apologized. Later they find out that her name wasn’t even “Debbie” but it was actually Anne. So this person “Debbie” never really existed. I am assuming that this is the dominant/ patriarchal reading whereas a subversive/feminist literary critic might focus a little more on small things like how bad “Debbie” was treated and how the group of people got what they deserved. They also might look into this group of females some more and maybe come up with some thoughts and a reason why they act they way they do. A fact that may play a role in all of that is that none of them had a mother except for one person and her mother gets beaten by the father and they applaud him for that.