What Are Big Girls Made Of By Marge Piercy

In Marge Piercy’s “What Are Big Girls Made Of?”, she uses metaphors and emphasizes the impact that society has on women to show women how their lives are being negatively influenced. Marge Piercy (1997) emphasizes the patriarchal expectations of society in using the metaphor, “She is manufactured like a sports sedan./She is retooled, refitted and redesigned/every decade” (line 5-7). The way Piercy shows women that they should not be influenced by society is through harsh comparisons. She condemns the way women are supposed to look by showing the idiocracy in comparing them to a car. Further, Marge Piercy (1997) says “...bodies as science projects,/gardens to be weeded,/dogs to be trained?” (line 79-81). Piercy again shows women that society wants to view them as projects, as items that need to look a certain way and act a certain way. …show more content…
Piercy also shows the power that society has on women in comparing them to French women. “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.../never meant for walking” (Piercy, 1997, line 26-32). These lines show how society only views physical appearances in flaunting women’s body parts as perfection. It also shows how society condemns women into worthless objects meant not to work but to be looked at. Piercy’s poem is ultimately a wake up call to women to see the craziness society has rooted into their