"Belly Good"--Jemima J

Vickey Meyer
Christine Specht
Contemporary Women’s Fiction
10 July 2008

“Belly Good”

My nieces are currently obsessed with Webkins, which are stuffed animals one can buy and then register online, giving them homes, walks, and food. After introducing me to a panda they had named Halle, I remarked that she looked a little sad. My youngest niece then told me the stuffed panda was sad because she was fat. While it was true the panda had a cute pudgy stomach, I was disturbed that my niece equated sadness with being fat. So I took it upon myself to teach my nieces a new phrase inspired by a Marge Piercy poem called “Belly good.” Piercy points out women’s obsession with thinness with an apostrophe to her belly saying, “You’re not supposed to exist/ at all this decade. You’re to be flat/ as a kitchen table” (Piercy ln 12-14). Piercy goes on to state that her belly is a comfortable swell and ends the poem by labeling bellies “our female shame and sunburst strength” (Piercy ln 40).
In Jemima J British novelist Jane Green addresses the universal issue of obesity and dieting. The main character, Jemima, begins the novel with the line, “God, I wish I were thin” (Green 1) and continues through the trials of internet dating, dieting, and attempting to find happiness. While I do believe these issues are important to the modern woman, I do not agree with the message readers seem to be learning from Jemima. She hides her binges, embracing the “female shame” portion of Piercy’s poem. After swinging between the extremes of over eating to obsessive dieting and exercise, Jemima does seem to find a happy medium, but only when she has snagged the man of her dreams, which only happens after she has reached an enviable size 10.
The main problem I have with Green’s message is summed up toward the end of the novel when the third person narrator, who obtrusively and annoyingly breaks into the plot, tells readers that “Jemima Jones never dared to believe in herself” (Green 373). Never in the novel does our flawed and likeable heroine learn the other lesson Piercy teaches in her poem. Jemima never learns to look at her body as her “sunburst strength.” I believe in being healthy, but I also join “half the women in the country [who] are a size 14” (Green 2). I am amazed that in this day and age when women have overcome the obstacles of suffrage and employment equality that we still look to outside sources to tell us what is beautiful. And we still value or devalue ourselves based on what those outside sources say.
With reality shows that display competitions to be the next top model or which contestant can lose the most weight the fastest and workout videos like Abs of Steel, I am looking forward to the day when I can read a novel or watch a television show where the size 18/20 heroine finds happiness, her dream job, and her dream lover and ends each episode eating chocolate, patting her belly, and looking into the camera while pronouncing the new catchphrase, “Belly good.”

Works Cited
Green, Jane. Jemima J. New York: Broadway Books, 1999.
Piercy, Marge. "Belly Good." What Are Big Girls Made Of?. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc., 1997. 75-76.