Maya Angelou's Self-Image And Its Influences On Us

Self-Image and Its Influences on Us
According to the Huffington Post, self-image has affected over 60% of social media users (Silva 1). Self-image is the way that one perceives themselves based off of what is happening in his life at a given time. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou tells the story of a young Maya Angelou and her coming of age. Although there was not social media when Maya Angelou was young, the outside world was able to affect her self-image. Her book gives great insight into her life, including the terrible parts, such as the heavy racism in Maya’s hometown, Stamps, the effects of her rape, and her struggling sexuality. Maya’s self-image significantly changes because of these factors in a way that she can never

For example, Maya grows up in Stamps, Arkansas. Stamps is a terribly racist place that shapes Maya into the person that she is. Because of the great divide between whites and blacks at the time, blacks felt less like human beings compared to the whites in the town. This can be seen when Maya wrote, “Because I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous of my beauty, had turned me into a too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil” (Angelou 3). Maya feels left out in her own hometowns and her self-image of herself makes her want to be someone that she is not. It also makes her feel inferior and lesser than the whites. It reveals how awful racism made Maya feel about herself. Stamps is so intensely racist that a saying in the town goes, “People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn’t buy vanilla ice cream” (49). This saying makes Maya feel like an outcast and outsider in Stamps. The negative effects that one can feel from being an outcast are insurmountable. A major role in the way that self-image is created would be racism and prejudice because of how the effects of the two stay with Maya for the rest of her

The times that Maya grows up during are not accepting of different sexualities and viewpoints. Maya is afraid that her own mother will not accept her if she is a lesbian. One can see this when Maya says, “I knew her [Maya’s mother] well enough to know that if I committed almost any crime and told her the truth about it she not only wouldn’t disown me but would give me her protection. But just suppose I was developing into a lesbian, how would she react?” (275). This helps explain how Maya has a very insecure and confused self-image about her sexuality. She is so afraid to be true to herself that she would not even tell her own mother her thoughts. Also, the lengths that Maya goes through to prove her sexuality affect her self-image. This can be seen when she writes, “The little pleasure I was able to take from the fact that if I could have a baby I obliviously wasn’t a lesbian was crowded into my mind’s tiniest corner by the massive pushing in of fear, guilt and self-revulsion” (284). This, again, shows Maya’s insecurities on her sexuality that she goes so far to prove that she is not a lesbian that she gets pregnant. It tells how her self-image is distorted enough that to give herself a new self-image of not being a lesbian she would put in jeopardy the rest of her life. Maya’s sexuality and confusion of it greatly affects her