In the Dream House

Machado pauses the narrative to reflect on how, when she was a child, her parents called her “melodramatic” and a “drama queen.” She questions these terms’ implications and why women’s emotions are so often taken less seriously or framed as excessive or hysterical. Enraged at how society teaches girls that they cannot trust their own perspectives, she’s often spoken about this cultural problem with her therapist and friends. She asks “how people decide who is or is not an unreliable narrator. And after that decision has been made, what do we do with people who attempt to construct their own vision of justice?” (143).

Machado describes the cultural history of the new wave band ‘Til Tuesday’s music video for their 1984 single, “Voice Carry.” In the music video, singer and songwriter Aimee Mann plays a character in a domestically abusive heterosexual relationship. After the music video was released, Mann revealed that she first wrote the song about a woman and used feminine pronouns to designate the abuser. However, the record label company pressured the band to erase any lesbian elements from the song. Decades later, Mann (who had since become a solo artist) released another music video for her 2012 song “Labrador.