What are big girls made of?

Piercy, Marge (1936 - 0)

Original Text

1The construction of a woman:

2a woman is not made of flesh

3of bone and sinew

4belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe.

5She is manufactured like a sports sedan.

6She is retooled, refitted and redesigned

7every decade.

8Cecile had been seduction itself in college.

9She wriggled through bars like a satin eel,

10her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed

11in the dark red lipstick of desire.

12She visited in '68 still wearing skirts

13tight to the knees, dark red lipstick,

14while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt,

15lipstick pale as apricot milk,

16hair loose as a horse's mane. Oh dear,

17I thought in my superiority of the moment,

18whatever has happened to poor Cecile?

19She was out of fashion, out of the game,

20disqualified, disdained, dis-

21membered from the club of desire.

22Look at pictures in French fashion

23magazines of the 18th century:

24century of the ultimate lady

25fantasy wrought of silk and corseting.

26Paniers bring her hips out three feet

27each way, while the waist is pinched

28and the belly flattened under wood.

29The breasts are stuffed up and out

30offered like apples in a bowl.

31The tiny foot is encased in a slipper

32never meant for walking.

33On top is a grandiose headache:

34hair like a museum piece, daily

35ornamented with ribbons, vases,

36grottoes, mountains, frigates in full

37sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy

38of a hairdresser turned loose.

39The hats were rococo wedding cakes

40that would dim the Las Vegas strip.

41Here is a woman forced into shape

42rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh:

43a woman made of pain.

44How superior we are now: see the modern woman

45thin as a blade of scissors.

46She runs on a treadmill every morning,

47fits herself into machines of weights

48and pulleys to heave and grunt,

49an image in her mind she can never

50approximate, a body of rosy

51glass that never wrinkles,

52never grows, never fades. She

53sits at the table closing her eyes to food

54hungry, always hungry:

55a woman made of pain.

56A cat or dog approaches another,

57they sniff noses. They sniff asses.

58They bristle or lick. They fall

59in love as often as we do,

60as passionately. But they fall

61in love or lust with furry flesh,

62not hoop skirts or push up bras

63rib removal or liposuction.

64It is not for male or female dogs

65that poodles are clipped

66to topiary hedges.

67If only we could like each other raw.

68If only we could love ourselves

69like healthy babies burbling in our arms.

70If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed

71to need what is sold us.

72Why should we want to live inside ads?

73Why should we want to scourge our softness

74to straight lines like a Mondrian painting?

75Why should we punish each other with scorn

76as if to have a large ass

77were worse than being greedy or mean?

78When will women not be compelled

79to view their bodies as science projects,

80gardens to be weeded,

81dogs to be trained?

82When will a woman cease

83to be made of pain?

Notes

Digital Facsimile of Original Pages:

Back to Line

26] Paniers: whalebone or wire frames that spread out a woman's skirt at the hips. Back to Line

74] Mondrian: Pieter Cornelis Mondrian (1872-1944), abstract painter. Back to Line

Publication Start Year

1966

Publication Notes

On the Issues (Spring 1966): 60.

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

RPO 2000.

Rhyme

unrhyming

Special Copyright

<b>This poem cannot be published anywhere without the written consent of Marge Piercy, Leapfrog Press or Knopf permissions department.</b>