“everybody told me how good I looked, though” in the collection of poems The Princess Saves Herself in this By: Amanda Lovelace, Published: April 23, 2016
The collection of poems titled The Princess Saves Herself in this One is a personal composition of Amanda Lovelace’s struggles as a woman. She focuses on her experiences with body image, eating disorders, the media’s portrayal of women, and sexual assault. Her poems are written in a style in which the reader feels like he or she is right there with her experiencing the same adversity in which some cases they probably are. She includes some rhyming in her poems, but primary uses descriptive imagery in short anecdotals to describe twenty-four of her more difficult life experiences. It is clear that she writes through a feminist lens and is bringing attention to many issues that young girls face in today’s society. The title The princess Saves Herself in this One really speaks to how today’s society is still instilling the ideas that women’s dependence on men is a necessity and even portrayed as charming in many beloved childhood books. Through her poems she is also bringing comfort to those who do experience severe body image issues in the fact that they are not alone and that its not something to be ashamed of as she is publishing a book of poems in which that is their focus.
Within Amanda Lovelace’s book of poems titled The Princess Saves Herself in this One, there is one poem titled “everybody told me how good I looked, though”. It addresses her body image issues as well as her eating disorders. Lines four through eight read “my mother told me / i was too fat/ & that I needed to / go on a diet / immediately”. This depicts how toxic the relationship between Lovelace and her mother was. It also speaks to how much is invested on young women to look a certain way. The word “immediately” is placed on its own line which indicates its importance as she did not have any other choice but to lose weight. In lines nine through seventeen Lovelace writes “for an entire year, / food barely passed / through my lips. / i did not even allow myself / to take a sip of water / because i wanted to be / so thin that i / could blow away / with the slightest breeze”. This indicates that after her mother told her to lose weight, she began having severe body image issues and developed an eating disorder. Even though she was unhealthy after losing so much weight, she still liked this version of her the best. All that mattered to her in this moment was that she measured up to her mom and other women and girls in her life. This poem sheds light on how the expectations set for young women to match a certain standard can truly be destructive to their physical and mental health.
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