What Do Women Want?

The red dress doesn’t need a speaker; it tells a story all its own. In the absence of the red dress, the speaker in “What Do Women Want?” must conjure it in the reader’s imagination, and she gets right to the point. There is no ambiguity to a garment that is “too tight” (Line 3) and the color of blood. The red dress is up to something. It has an ulterior motive. The red dress does not concern itself with being liked. It is designed for one purpose, and that is to disrupt, to overwhelm with desire. The red dress is an unreliable narrator who can’t be trusted, yet always tells the truth. After all, “no one has to guess / what’s underneath” (Lines 6-7).

In film, a woman in a red dress is almost always scheming to trick a male character, through seduction, into giving her what she wants. Historically, the Lady in Red is a female ghost associated with old hotels and public spaces. In former mining towns in the American West, she is often depicted as the spirit of a dead sex worker or cast-off lover. In her haunting, she persists in making her presence and her violent history known.