What Are Big Girls Made Of? Poem by Marge Piercy

What Are Big Girls Made Of?

Rating: 4.4


The construction of a woman:
a woman is not made of flesh
of bone and sinew
belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe.
She is manufactured like a sports sedan.
She is retooled, refitted and redesigned
every decade.
Cecile had been seduction itself in college.
She wriggled through bars like a satin eel,
her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed
in the dark red lipstick of desire.

She visited in '68 still wearing skirts
tight to the knees, dark red lipstick,
while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt,
lipstick pale as apricot milk,
hair loose as a horse's mane. Oh dear,
I thought in my superiority of the moment,
whatever has happened to poor Cecile?
She was out of fashion, out of the game,
disqualified, disdained, dis-
membered from the club of desire.

Look at pictures in French fashion
magazines of the 18th century:
century of the ultimate lady
fantasy wrought of silk and corseting.
Paniers bring her hips out three feet
each way, while the waist is pinched
and the belly flattened under wood.
The breasts are stuffed up and out
offered like apples in a bowl.
The tiny foot is encased in a slipper
never meant for walking.
On top is a grandiose headache:
hair like a museum piece, daily
ornamented with ribbons, vases,
grottoes, mountains, frigates in full
sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy
of a hairdresser turned loose.
The hats were rococo wedding cakes
that would dim the Las Vegas strip.
Here is a woman forced into shape
rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh:
a woman made of pain.

How superior we are now: see the modern woman
thin as a blade of scissors.
She runs on a treadmill every morning,
fits herself into machines of weights
and pulleys to heave and grunt,
an image in her mind she can never
approximate, a body of rosy
glass that never wrinkles,
never grows, never fades. She
sits at the table closing her eyes to food
hungry, always hungry:
a woman made of pain.

A cat or dog approaches another,
they sniff noses. They sniff asses.
They bristle or lick. They fall
in love as often as we do,
as passionately. But they fall
in love or lust with furry flesh,
not hoop skirts or push up bras
rib removal or liposuction.
It is not for male or female dogs
that poodles are clipped
to topiary hedges.

If only we could like each other raw.
If only we could love ourselves
like healthy babies burbling in our arms.
If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed
to need what is sold us.
Why should we want to live inside ads?
Why should we want to scourge our softness
to straight lines like a Mondrian painting?
Why should we punish each other with scorn
as if to have a large ass
were worse than being greedy or mean?

When will women not be compelled
to view their bodies as science projects,
gardens to be weeded,
dogs to be trained?
When will a woman cease
to be made of pain?

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Jane Lalone 30 January 2009

I have to say it. Marge, Marge, Marge! Your poems are such pieces of art! You paint with words in a way in which the rest of us just fantasize! ! ! And, whether it is a spark of holiness, a smirk of bawdiness, or a shard of sorrow, always the meaning goes straight to the heart. Jane LaLone

9 2 Reply
Cin Sweet 12 April 2007

A Wonderful poem.

4 3 Reply
Sallie Howson 04 May 2007

hear hear..i love this poem

4 2 Reply
Brian Jani 05 May 2014

Hahaa catchy title, nice

2 2 Reply
Colleen Courtney 18 May 2014

Such an honest and truthful piece of poetry. And poetry it is. Speaking from my own experience outer beauty doesn't last. A lot can happen to a woman in a lifetime and sometime are inner battles scars start to appear on the outside. This poem is so perfectly worded. The poet knows of what she writes!

3 1 Reply
Unnikrishnan E S 11 December 2021

Good poem, hilarious and the same time, poignant. Women have been programmed over eons to be objects of attraction for mens' passion. They

0 0 Reply
Chinedu Dike 09 December 2021

An insightful poem written with conviction.......

0 0 Reply
Cat Perry 20 April 2021

When will men grow up enough to accept our bodies as they are?

0 0 Reply
Dr Antony Theodore 02 December 2020

She is manufactured like a sports sedan. She is retooled, refitted and redesigned every decade. Cecile had been seduction itself in college. She wriggled through bars like a satin eel, lot of thinking and imagination. tony

0 0 Reply
Bree Z Love 02 March 2018

Great poem with irony and great imagery.

1 0 Reply
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Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy

Detroit, Michigan
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