The Legs
5
plain
2019-11-14T09:32:51-08:00
The narrator’s attitude towards her legs reveals a great amount about her attitude towards herself and human anatomy in general. She attempts to sketch her thighs, knees and ankles but marvels at how monstrous they appear from her own perspective. She explains her thighs, “were like two funnels jammed to the bottom of a grain hopper, which was my squarish torso, big as a house” (Jackson). The narrator then comments on how legs can have tropical growths, varicose veins, protruding blood vessels, wild hairs, dessicated skin and knobby knees. The comments reveal how the narrator distorts her own body image. She thinks of herself as almost monstrous and believes all humans appear crude and egregious if examined close enough. To interact properly with My Body, text and image are of equal importance. The visuals clearly portray how the narrator envisions certain body parts, but her relation to them and associated memories are only revealed in text. The reader must be willing to explore both visual and literary elements to fully understand the narrator. It is through this exploration that the reader realizes how intensely she values human anatomy as a way to identify herself.
