When The Fat Girl Gets Skinny Analysis

In the poem, When The Fat Girl Gets Skinny, by Blythe Baird, the poet addresses the issue of social ideology and how these trends affect young women. Told in a first perspective point of view, the poet supports her theme by describing how teenagers are being affected, establishing a social conflict of false need to achieve trends by identifying motifs for teenager’s actions, incorporating the use of life experiences from the past to the present tense and finalizing with a shift to highlight positivity in change of habit. Baird’s purpose is to illustrate a major conflict among young women who are being affected by social idolization of being skinny. She creates a mood of hopeful in order to inspire young teenagers who are currently harming

High school is a common source in which inspires and spreads trends similar to the comparison described by Baird, “Toasting to high school and survival, complementing each other’s thigh gaps.” (3-4) Baird compares high school to survival to highlight the teenager’s motivation to take certain measures to achieve social expectations in order to survive in today’s society. Teenagers create trends that are inspired from celebrities such as “Beyonce-inspired thigh gaps” known as a gap between a person’s thighs that give the illusion that the individual has skinny thighs and therefore promote the ideal slim body shape. Society promotes these unnecessary trends by providing tips of how to get skinny and suggesting that losing weight is a solution to everything. This compels teenagers to practice ridiculous methods by starving themselves, using waist trainers or even wrapping their thighs. The idolization of slim figures are blinding teenagers to believe it is a necessity to practice these methods. As Blaid describes society’s perspective, “If you develop an eating disorder when you are already thin to begin with, you go to the hospital. If you develop an eating disorder when you are not thin to begin with, you are a success story,”(26-27) this is to point out how society has manipulated the point of view on health conditions to be viewed as a

The purpose of this is to set an example to her audience of how she struggled and how she achieved happiness without having to harm herself. It is evident, individuals develop traumas at a young age due to the ideas being harvested by society, for instance, “By the time I was sixteen, I had already experienced being clinically overweight, underweight and obese,”(17-18) this helps the audience understand that these ideas not only traumatize a child but compels a child to feel the necessity of achieving ideal features at a young age. It is evident that for a child to be considered “... overweight, underweight, and obese...” by the age of sixteen is not healthy. Blaid explains how as a child she wasn’t affected by being called fact, until she understood what it truly meant. This is to highlight that children are introduced to these ideas at a young age, and will eventually develop into a distorted understanding of healthy lifestyle. Blaid then continues by describing how she was viewed as an inspiration when she lost weight due to an illness. This is to emphasize how teenagers are blinded by the idea of getting skinny and will consider any method regardless of the consequences or possible disorders that may develop. Throughout the poem, Blaid uses past tense to create an understanding of how she was impacted and later shifts into the present, “I