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She was wishful fluff conjured up by The Man who, like some men, see women as either Good or Bad, Madonna or Slut.
Glinda was a fantastical ideal with a blank smile dressed in a frothy pink dress (of course), perfect hair never mussed by tornadoes or flying monkeys and pristine nails never stained by rusty tin boys confusing lust for love. She looked like a goddess, waving her wand, making everything sparkle or disappear because The Man envisioned her and held all the power.
Glinda popped those ruby slippers on Dorothy and sent her back home like a good, obedient girl because everyone knows pigtails and pinafores belong in Kansas (said The Man.) It was irrelevant that home was the place she ran from (It was only a dream whispered Glinda to Dorothy.)
A real witch would’ve turned The Man into a turnip and taught Dorothy to fly.
Charlotte Hamrick is a New Orleans writer whose work appears in a number of literary journals and is included in Best Small Fictions 2022, 2023, and is upcoming in the 2025 anthology. Her debut prose chapbook, Offset Melodies, was published in ELJ Editions’ Grieving Hope collection in 2025. She is Managing Editor for Reckon Review.
