Grace Nichols is a Guyanese woman born in 1950 who moves to London. Her work as a woman of an ethnic minority in England is focused on the discrimination she was faced with in regards to her body type, skin color, etc. Nichols uses poetry to portray the idea of body image by using different perspectives: a character she created, ‘the fat black woman’, the Guyanese community and famous icons that can be recognized easily. By doing so, it provides a motivational tone for the audience to remember that they are beautiful regardless of society’s outdated rules. This essay references her poems: The Fat Woman Goes Shopping, Looking at Miss World, See our Sister, Those Farewell Party Nights, Beauty, Island Man, and Weeping Woman.
BODY IMAGE
The topic of body image is mentioned from the perspective of the fat black woman. The idea that as a woman of color, “nothing soft and bright and billowing [flows] like breezy sunlight”. Nothing is simple for her, even mundane events like shopping can cause insecurity as she notices others “exchanging slimming glances” due to her body type. She observes the sales ladies judging her for not fitting the “frozen thin” stereotype. The line “the fat black woman gets up and pours some gin toasting herself a likely win, contrasts her discouragement she was facing. Though she is compared to “slim aspirants”, she feels confident in her own skin, thus illustrating the character’s personal growth and development.
In the poem, Weeping Woman, Nichols portrays the idea of beauty standards through the perspective of a famous icon, Dora Maar (1907-1997) who was Pablo Picasso’s muse. She talks about how her face was distorted and how it makes her feel as if she is a “broken piece of crockery”. She felt worthless, as Picasso did not do justice to her beauty. The use of enjambment throughout gives insight into her destructive state of mind as she is feeling too much of a mess to be able to form full sentences and have her ideas be clear. Medusa and Cleopatra are referenced in the poem. They are strong women who were formally harmed by men which led to their own destruction, somewhat like Dora Maar’s current situation. Picasso, her lover, hurt her self-esteem by using her face and changing it yet despite feeling honored, she looks down on herself. She recognizes that she is forever going to be represented as the “twentieth-century grief”. This snowballs to jealousy towards Mona Lisa who is looked at with beauty and praise. However, she does not understand that Picasso’s intention was to reconstruct society’s idea of beauty by turning her face into something unexpected. This links back to the idea that women all around the world are trying to look like someone they are not, due to societal beauty standards. This poem provides solace to the audience as they learn that famous icons also feel insecure and self-deprecate.
HOME AND DEPARTURE
Her book Startling the Flying Fish (2005) has a recurring motif of departure as it follows a Guyanese person leaving for England to have a fresh start. Nichols tries to warn her sister of the difficulties a woman of color will face as a result of moving to a country full of prejudice with “no flowers in neon”. She understands her sister’s naivety and attempts to steer her away from making a decision that could negatively change her life forever as “she won’t [be able to] escape the voices, the nuances” which is in reference to the haunting unwarranted opinions of others. A paradox is used in the line “a room full of dark-eyed girls glowing in their prime. In a voice tingling spine, he sings: Pretty Blue Eyes”. It exhibits the concept of imperialism and how Eurocentric features were made the beauty standard between women of all races due to the “reckless arrogance of youth”. Another motif in her poems is nature as she depicts that being around nature is better than being in a “grey metallic soar” which condemns people of color. She uses this motif to describe her hometown to alert others that staying in “the small emerald island” allows them to be free of bigotry. It shows the audience that moving to another city is not worth having to feel as though you are not welcome to society, because of their pre-made notions about people of color.
CONCLUSION
Overall, Grace Nichols establishes the idea of body image and how it can lead to self-destruction, yet gives a positive meaning on how beauty can be reconstructed. The realization that Eurocentric ideas of the perfect life, or the perfect body being false, leaves the audience with a sense of belonging as they will know they are not alone when dealing with societal pressures on their appearance.