quickly revealed to be the narrator’s own legs.
Whether good or not, it is clear from the first line
that her legs elicit strong emotion. This emotion
is clarified when the narrator declares the
anguish she and her legs have caused each
other. She is unhappy with their imperfection,
and the text implies that her legs—so strong and
confident—are themselves let down by the lack
of self-esteem exhibited by their owner. This
misery is measured by the failure of her legs to
meet the perfection of legs seen in magazines,
and worse, their failure even to be average.
Stanza 2
In the second stanza, the narrator recounts the
efforts she made to force those unsightly legs to
endure various strenuous and athletic activities,
such as hanging from trapeze and rowing. They
may not be beautiful, but her legs are not defi-
cient in any other way. In lines 7 and 8, she
figuratively describes trying to stretch her legs
into a different shape. She worries, but to no
effect. This culminates in the frustration in line
9 that, despite all her efforts, these legs remain
the same. All of this exercise has not changed her
physiology, it has not made her slim and lovely.
Her legs remain strong—and large.
Stanza 3
In stanza 3, the narrator deplores her legs for
their deficiency in not being skinny and sexy,
again mentioning beautiful models seen in
books and magazines as the standard against
which she evaluates herself. It is a painful com-
parison because it is both unrealistic for many
people and unreasonable for the narrator to be
so hard on herself. The narrator becomes even
more intimate with her readers in lines 17 and 18
when she describes her pasty legs as seen spread
ingloriously against a toilet seat, a setting inher-
ently unflattering to any person. She describes
this as the moment when she first became aware
of her legs, as if, again, they were an entity
separate from herself. Interestingly, this separa-
tion of her legs from the rest of her body affords
her the opportunity to blame them without nec-
essarily blaming herself. The narrator reveals
this to be the adolescent angst of a twelve-year-
old girl, even as she compares her young, strong,
but large legs to those of her much older gym
teacher. It is an irrational comparison for a teen-
age girl, but sheiscomparing herself to an ath-
letic adult and not to someone who is overweight
or misshapen.
Stanza 4
As with the first stanza, the narrator opens the
fourth stanza with an exclamation, overcome
with the emotions she feels concerning her legs.
Here she remembers, with a mixture of embar-
rassment and pride, the acrobatic feats those
twelve-year-old legs performed for a school pro-
gram. She knows she did an excellent job, but her
memory of the day is colored by embarrassment
at the applause she received, perhaps because her
legs were on display to an audience as sheathed
in shiny new pants. Again, her legs are their own
creature, confident and unabashed. The mention
of the applause in the final line may refer both to
the audience’s approval and to the sound her
pants could make as they slap together, making
themselves even more conspicuous in her mind.Stanza 5
The exclamation repeats for a third time at the
beginning of stanza 5, heralding another emo-
tional outburst. The tone of this stanza is more
apologetic. The narrator painfully recalls high
school and beaches, two places where a teen-
ager’s self-image is vulnerable. Here she is a little
older, fifteen to eighteen years old, and embar-
rassment has turned to hate for her legs. She
cannot hide them, and she cannot change
them—but she recognizes that no matter how
much she despises this physical feature of her
body, her legs have always been there for her,
strong and unfailing. In fact, she is embarrassed
by this hatred of her own body but still has
difficulty letting go of her self-loathing.Stanza 6
The tone of the poem changes significantly in
stanza 6. The narrator, almost reluctantly or
perhaps sheepishly, yields to a celebration of
the strength in her legs. She is an adult and the
focus of importance has shifted from unrealistic
magazine standards to real life. Her legs swim,
walk home, make love. In lines 46 and 47, she
suggests that her legs have more stamina than
her arms. This comparison, pitting one part of
her body against another, is humorous. In line 48
she directly addresses her legs, but more calmly
than in lines 1, 22, and 33, without the exclama-
tion points. She compares her legs to pillows,
which can be read as a reference to their plump-
ness but also as a description of comfort pro-
vided to other people. Line 50 implies that her
legs are vast, but again she directs this descrip-
tion toward the positive in line 51, where her legsPoem in Which My Legs Are Accepted