Plain
She walks around with her head held high
Her long stockings reaching mid thigh
Covering her skin from the depths of the world
On one axis she may twirl
Most acquire her to be seen
Not in the vibrant light she dreams
So she sits in the corners covered up and shunned
Her knee socks lowering just to gain some funds
People thought she may wear thin
On that one axis she may spin
Haunted by the scars she can’t cover
She begins to call out to her mother and father
Looking into her reflection
She sits quietly anticipating the question
What have you done to yourself
Taking on the path of someone else
Your punctuating hair know thin
Because on that one axis you spin
Conforming to the world’s ruthless and rich
She realized that she gained an itch
Scratching away years plagued with pain
Understanding she was now plain
For my 16th birthday, my mom gifted with the book, We Should All Be Feminists, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A year after I wrote this poem, she began to realize that I had taken an interest in the topic of women and girls rights specifically reflecting feminism. As I was reading the book, a quote jumped out of the surrounded text and plastered itself onto my reflection, “Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.” This quote was a tide ashore the statistics of which show; the wage gap between men and women is 15.7 percent and 1 in 5 women compared to the 1 in 71 men in the United States has been raped in their lifetime. If people make culture and we must consider women our culture, these statistics must become that of the past. When I wrote this poem I was highlighting the information I had gathered over a year about the problems which plague gender inequality. The poem was given the name plain to reflect the potential reality of which she now views as her own. That being a reality where she is not seen, a figure without a shadow no longer given a chance to leave her mark on the world. If I was able to gather this knowledge in one year, then why are we still fighting for a problem so obviously evident that it was recognized by a 14-year-old?
