are a backdrop to the contrasting beauty of a
man’s legs. Lines 52 and 53 mention dancing, a
euphemism for sex. The calm joy and serene
attitude of these lines are a far cry from the
embarrassment of her twelve-year-old girlhood.
At the end of stanza 6, the narrator goes
beyond herself and beyond all other activities.
Her legs have a place not only in her life but
also in the lives of others. In lines 54 and 55, the
narrator uses highly figurative language to
describe another important stage in life in which
her legs play an important role: childbirth. The
verse is joyful, anticipatory, and even reverent of
the legs she often maligned. She likens her legs to
canal locks, an acclimatizing passage through
which this child will pass on its way to join the
world.
Stanza 7
Stanza 7 is very brief, only two lines long. They
describe the new life she has created, born with
the help of her strong legs, the infant rising up to
meet the world.
Themes
Self-Esteem
The primary theme of ‘‘Poem in Which My Legs
Are Accepted’’ is self-esteem, or belief in one’s
own abilities and characteristics. People with
self-esteem are poised and confident, which
gives them charisma, or likability, and can lead
to success simply through perception rather than
mere skill. In this poem, Fraser, as a young teen-
ager, struggles with self-esteem, as many teen-
agers do. She encapsulates her problem in her
legs, which are plump instead of slim. She is
painfully aware, through magazines and books,
that her legs do not fit the cultural ideal, and she
sees her legs as having more in common with her
gym teacher’s than with those of her cheerleader
classmates. At the same time, this teenager is
amazed at the strength in her legs, which swim,
tumble, and do splits with agility.
As the poet grows older, her lack of esteem
for her legs gives way to appreciation. As she has
gained self-esteem in other areas of her life, her
childish worries over the suitability of her legs
have faded. Her legs, in fact, have never failed
her. At the end of the poem, the poet celebrates
her legs as a gateway to new life. With her legs
she makes love to a man she loves. Later these
legs will help to deliver the child the two have
made together. The end of the poem is the begin-
ning of a new life.
The narrator’s lack of confidence in her legs
largely stems from her comparison against what
she has been taught to perceive as beautiful or, at
least, typical. In the United States during Fraser’s
childhood in the late 1940s and early 1950s, as in
the early twenty-first century, slim figures were
favored over fuller ones, although the line
between what is attractive and healthy and what
is not is highly subjective, sometimes contradic-
tory, and constantly shifting, generally toward
skinnier and skinnier extremes. Many people
who do not fit the media-advertised ideal of fem-
inine appeal go on to have happy and fulfilled
lives as adults, whether or not they are ever able to
physically replicate the ideal. What these people
realize, as does Fraser at the end of her poem
when she is grown up, is that self-fulfillment has
little to do with these purported ideals of physical
beauty.Physical Activity
In ‘‘Poem in Which My Legs Are Accepted,’’ the
narrator as a teenager despairs about the accept-
ability of her thick legs despite all the physical
activities she can engage in: hanging from tra-
peze, rowing, and cartwheels, for instance. She is
clearly a healthy young woman, despite her lack
of confidence. As an adult, she continues to be
active, through swimming, walking, sex, and
childbirth. Any perceived deficiency with her
legs is all in her mind, but the mind exerts con-
siderable influence over physical well-being. The
narrator survives her teenage years healthy and
intact because, although she dislikes her heavy
legs, they are still strong, capable legs that carry
her confidently through many activities and
achievements. Through physical activity, the
adolescent narrator’s legs exhibited the confi-
dence she herself never felt.
As a teenager in the early 1950s, Fraser as the
poem’s narrator confronts her perceived defi-
ciency with physical activity, hoping that her
legs will slim down and be tanned instead of
pasty white; however, she does not condone self-
abuse or dieting. It is not part of the conscious-
ness that created this poem. ‘‘Poem in Which My
Legs Are Accepted’’ was written in the mid-1960s,
at the cusp of the second wave of feminism, when
women were casting off patriarchal roles and
expectations such as the model-perfect body.Poem in Which My Legs Are Accepted