What Are Big Girls Made Of By Plath Essay

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Recommended: Beauty standards and how they affect women

Oprah Winfrey once asked, "Are you ready to stop colluding with a culture that makes so many of us feel physically inadequate?" Body image has been a relevant topic throughout history with the styles and ideal shapes of bodies changing through the ages. Whether one is looking at the glorified hourglass shape of the Golden Age of Hollywood (1930s-1950s), the Heroin Chic look of the 1990s, or Kim Kardashian and the plastic surgery trend of today, women of all ages struggle with how they look compared to the "ideal" woman of the time. Both "Mirror" and "What Are Big Girls Made Of?" are from the later 1900s but are still very relatable to readers today. Although the poems "Mirror" and "What are big girls made of?" use very different points of view to convey their messages about woman, body image, and society, they both use strong imagery, personification, and symbolism to effectively communicate their ideas …show more content…

Although readers might not figure it out at first, Plath is telling her story from the point of view of a mirror, and later, a lake. Plath does this by using human verbs to describe the mirror's actions in order to create metaphors for what the mirror is really doing. For example, in line two, Plath shows he mirror "swallowing," which in reality is the mirror reflecting. Plath's personification is essential to her message in showing readers how much power the personified mirror holds over the woman in the poem. She calls the mirror truthful, but not cruel, and the mirror itself acts innocent throughout the poem even though it can tell the woman is distressed because of it. The personification in "Mirror" shows readers that although the mirror believes itself to be blameless and honest, what the woman sees in the mirror is clouded by societally created stigmas and expectations, which create the gloomy and sad feel of the

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