"Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up."
Here is the true cost of looking for acceptance outside oneself: exhaustion. The girl in this poem cannot maintain the constant list of learned, artificial behaviors which make her acceptable. Eventually she just can't keep going, so she sacrifices herself -- her body -- in one final act of desperation in order to be perceived as acceptable.
"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."
Cecile returns to her college town a few years later out of style. Her friends have kept up with the latest trends, but Cecile has lost her desirability simply because she didn't. Her method of seduction is too outdated to be acceptable, but she has only been away for a few short years.
". . . She
sits at a table closing her eyes to food
hungry, always hungry:
a woman made of pain."
According to Piercy, the modern woman leads a life of continual, self-imposed suffering. She desires acceptance, so she maintains standards for her physical appearance which demand constant sacrifice and upkeep. Thus she sits at a table ignoring her hunger, despite ready access to food.
"It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in."
As the gardener trims his bonsai tree to remain diminutive and domesticated, he whispers affirmations which serve to deceive the tree about its true nature. He lies that this "less than" life is the ideal. This message is Piercy's own take on how girls are raised to expect weakness and containment.
