"Birdcage Thighs" by guest poet Jane Wyatt

I was pushed out of the womb of a woman

with legs small and thin.

I was rocked in my cradle at night by

two hands with slender lady fingers

and long red nails.

I suckled the breast of She whose breasts

were large and soft.

I was raised by a lady fair—midnight

in her hair

and ornaments

in her eyes.

I was pushed toward the bowl

to feed myself when hunger came.

I was thrust toward a table's fare, with the

cheese and the loaves, the knife so hot

the butter melted down

the yeasty bread—doughy to match my growing

thighs and widening hips. My breasts

made mountains of themselves and my eyes

grew wide at the thought of the bowl—

the bowl from which I fed.

I grew from child to Me overnight,

my tongue forever dipped

in tastes I wanted to forget.

I was called thunder thighs by boys in school—

the same boys who wanted my thighs wrapped

'round their bird-frame waists—like cages.

I was laughed at for my breasts by girls

who wanted them on their own chests.

I was dressed in women's clothing

by age fourteen, and my woman shape filled out every

line—my body bled out of its lines

like a child's coloring, and filled the folds

to make a young woman.

My hips grew round and legs grew strong,

and I was called fat by those who

grazed on callous words—I devoured my pain

with a side of fries.

I had a large nose and large eyes—

large breasts and the loins to match. Large

woman to tempt the little bird boys into her

cage and to make them feel her heavy thighs tighten

'round their waists, choking their breath out till

they fell on her in defeat.

No more, they cried.

No more of that. Let me go find a bird-boned

girl to twist and creak her bird-bone legs 'round

my waist, so I can heave in and out while she rasps my name.

No more—they couldn't hear my thick woman whispers and feel

the sway of my hips and the beat of my step.

They wanted their cages breakable,

so they could escape easier from the bird-boned women too weak

to hold them tight and ruffle their feathers.

JANE WYATT is a thirty-year-old creative writing major at Western Kentucky University. She writes a column called "Bluegrass Beat" for Down Home in the Barrens, a magazine based in her hometown, and has just discovered that poetry and memoir are her two favorite genres. She claims to have struggled with her body image all of her life. Wyatt lives in Glasgow, Kentucky with her children, Max (6) and Sophie (5).

Teach your children well

196 pounds
Some of my body issues come directly from my body—its imperfections and flaws—but most of them come from my childhood.

You see, I was raised in a house where one of us was considered pretty and one of us was considered smart.

I'll give you one guess which one I was.

As a result, it's taken me years to understand that it's possible to be pretty and smart and to have even an iota of objectivity about the way I look.

I might have mentioned this on the blog a while ago, but back in 2007, I had a bit of an epiphany about my looks. I was giving a reading and used a photo from myself at age ten for the publicity materials. When the advertisement went out via email, one of my students said something like, "I should have known you were always pretty."

The comment shocked me because until that moment I don't think I had ever thought of myself as pretty. Attractive, yes. Sexy, hell yes. But pretty? Not really. And I definitely hadn't thought of my childhod self as ANY of those things simply because of the dichotomy I was raised under ... Molly smart, Katie pretty.

For years I've thought about this dichotomy—wondered about it, analyzed it, written about it—and sometimes I find myself thinking, maybe it wasn't as bad as I remember. Maybe I'm being too hard on my parents.

But then, one of them slips up and says or does something that puts me right back at my ten-year-old insecure self.

This weekend that honor went to my mother.

I hadn't talked to her in a while, so I was catching her up on what's been going in my life lately. And when I told her that I was going to have a new author photo taken for my upcoming book, she said, "Make sure the camera isn't too close. It will look better from farther away."

Ouch.

I realized immediately I should have been wounded by this comment, but it was so offensive and so like my mother, that it was more laughable than hurtful.

Still, I didn't laugh.

Instead, I decided to send the message that—despite my parents' best efforts—I am no longer nervous about having a close-up photo taken. But my mother wouldn't let it go, insisting that "you don't want it to be too close."

At that point, I was fed up and explained—loudly, I might add—that author photos are never full body shots, that they are always, by definition, close-up.

She got the message—probably because of my volume—and backed off.

But later I kept thinking about it—does she really think I would look that bad close-up? Does she really think I'm that hard to look at? And is this why I thought I was unattractive until I was twenty years old?

It occurred to me then that my mother's comments were more about herself than they were about me. This is a woman who didn't want to join Facebook because she didn't think she had a good enough photo for her profile picture, a woman who looks stiff and unhappy in nearly every snapshot. She didn't want me to have a close-up taken because she never wants to have one taken of herself.

The truth is that it wasn't that my mother believed that only my sister was pretty when we were growing up or that she wanted me to look more like Katie. It was that she wished she looked more like my sister—more blonde and more thin. And she just assumed that everyone would have that same wish—including me.

Sure, it only takes me a few minutes to figure that out now, but when I was growing up, I lacked the critical thinking skills that allow me to understand this. So I walked through childhood believing I was gross.

I suppose that if I had a daughter—or even a son—I would be falling all over myself to make sure I didn't injure her self-esteem because of my own issues the way my mother did with me. But since I don't have any kids, I guess I'll just have to rely on all of you to take care of that for me.

Sibling Rivalry

189 pounds

Dave and I went to dinner tonight with my mother and her sister. The two of them are very close even though they are thirteen years apart in age and don't initially appear to look much alike. But when you really study them, it eventually becomes clear that they share many of the same features—they both have small brown eyes, a tiny upturned nose, and a thin, delicate mouth.

One of the reasons that it's hard to see these similarities is because my mother and aunt have completely different body shapes—my mother is short and squat, and her sister is long and lean. My aunt also wears her hair in a trendy hairstyle and dons age-appropriate but hip clothing. From a distance, she could easily pass for someone in her thirties and forties even though she's in her mid-fifties, and she is—by anyone's definition—very attractive.

As a child, my aunt was a bit of a nerd—wearing cat's eye glasses and looking awkward in her own skin. On the other hand, my mother, a former cheerleader and homecoming attendant, was a head-turning carbon copy of Jackie O in her day. Though she still retains some of that beauty, my mom now looks more like a grandmother than anything else—she wears her hair in a short permed style and has a penchant for tops decorated with flowers. So in some ways, the two of them have traded places—now my aunt is the one who is turning heads, and my mother is the one who feels uncomfortable in her body.

As a result of their differences, my mother often compliments her younger sister on everything—her clothes, her hair, her makeup, and of course, her body. And being the good niece, I also compliment her. I want my aunt (and everyone) to feel good about herself and know how attractive she looks. Which is why I told her how great she looked tonight.

But when I said so, my mother's response caught me completely off guard. She said, "Well, she works out every day!" as if this were the only explanation for my aunt's trim figure.

"I work out every day too," I said to my mother defensively, but based on her response, it was clear that she didn't get my point.

"But Vicki works out really hard," she added. My mother's implication was clear: If I worked out as hard as my aunt, I would be that thin too. And hand in hand with that implication was another one: if I'm not as thin as my aunt, then I'm not trying hard enough.

I'm sure it will be no surprise for me to tell you that I was having none of it: "I work out hard too!" I insisted. "When I lived in Cincinnati, I worked out two hours every day for an entire year, but during that whole time, I never lost any weight."

"That's true," my mother said. "There are other factors involved." Finally, my mother had figured out what I was trying to say, and why her original comment could easily be construed as misleading, even offensive.

But I don't blame my mother for the misunderstanding. I blame society. We are all taught—through the constant stream of advertisements for the latest fad diet and gym memberships—that if we are willing to discipline ourselves, then we can lose weight. And not just lose weight, but be thin. Model thin.

In reality, there are many people who are genetically designed to be bigger than the kind of women we glorify in our society. No matter how much they diet. No matter how much they exercise. And the implication that a woman is bigger or curvier because of her own lack of discipline is, quite simply, offensive. It may even be dangerous. Because it sends the message that if we are not model thin, then it is because we are not trying, we are not good. That message really frightens me, and it's one I will forever try to dispel—both here on the blog and every time I have dinner with people like my mother and my hot cougar of an aunt.