Who am I? Occasionally we let people know who we are without even saying a word. We seem to carry these screaming identity tags hung around our necks. When we go from place to place, we tell a story. It’s in the way we walk, talk, laugh, think, breathe, and communicate. We say, “I am polite and shy,” or “I am good; please look at me, love me,” or “I am no one of consequence,” or “I am all that matters,” or “I don’t care,” or even “I don’t know.” We all have a story to tell. Oftentimes our story changes with the company we keep or the feelings we hide. Women experience this battle for identity in austere and curious ways. Two writers that display this fact are Marge Piercy in her insightful but daunting poem, “Barbie Doll,” and Joyce Carol Oates in her strange but telling story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
“Barbie Doll” expresses the conflict over the Barbie ideal. The poem has an occasional rhyme within random lines and an uncontrolled rhythm and meter. Her word choice is exacting and powerful but always disquieting. She tells the tale of a thousand girls who were raised on the notion that, unless we are Barbie-perfect, we are worthless. The "girlchild," raised on dolls, was happy until the world perverted her with the lie that perfection is beauty, perfection is key, perfection is everything. The poem states,
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs. (825)
She turned into a woman and tore away what the world titled "imperfect." She lived as unto death, a mutilated vision of the Barbie illusion. Her identity was not an issue of self-reality, rather self-doubt. She was playing pretend, just as she played with her dolls, only she could not recover like Barbie is able to do. The girl just wants acceptance, just wants to be called beautiful, just wants to be perfect. Nothing more. Everything she wants is either transient or impossible. Perhaps there is more to her life; perhaps there is joy capable of surpassing the ephemeral. If there is more for her in that existence, she is not ready or wanting to find it. Living without a real identity will break a person. Piercy clarifies:
Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up. (825)
What is she missing? Is it the “classmate” alone who caused her hollowness? Her own hollowed out story ends as such,
In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending. (825)
In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Connie is a young girl filled with the hopes of immature but precious thrills. She hates her home-life; a place where love is seldom seen, rather it is implied. She lives for her moments away from the demands to be like sister, to be what her mommy calls perfect, to be her daddy’s little girl, and to be nothing more. Nothing more. Perhaps there is more to her home; perhaps there is joy capable of surpassing the ephemeral. If there is more for her in that home, she is not ready or wanting to find it. Her story is always changing. Her identity is like chocolate ice-cream, it just never lasts. Oates explains:
Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out; her laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home—“Ha, ha, very funny,”—but high-pitched and nervous anywhere else, like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet. (128,129)
The hope to become one thing is frequently outdone by the requirements to become another. She was a shell of herself, longing for some come-and-go moments spent with friends and dying for some lasting moments spent with family. Through the events of the story, her family goes away to a barbeque, and she is left alone with her dreams. During that time, Arnold Friend walks into her life and steals her away from all that she knows. Oates details the outrageous feelings of fear and loneliness that Connie lives out daily but deals with directly as this man confronts her. He spends a great deal of time and effort on her, trying to rip her away from her home and her ability to discern. He cajoles her, “Now come out through the kitchen to me, honey, and let's see a smile, try it, you’re a brave, sweet little girl [your family] don't know one thing about you and never did [...]” (443). After endless coaxing, she goes to him, feeling hollow. Connie has no identity to speak of, only desires, hopes, and the possibilities of her future. She is a young girl worn out of her self-made realities, living in doubt. What is she missing? Is it Arnold “Fiend” alone who had caused her hollowness? Her own hollowed out story ends as such, “the land behind him and on all sides of him—so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it” (443).
Oates and Piercy do an excellent job of describing the painful world of a hollow identity. Women face this issue daily yet confront the problem rarely. Changing an identity from moment to moment may be a result of having no foundational identity, no story at all. We all have a story that we want others to hear, but the real story we have to tell usually is locked up in the corridors of our hearts. We tell the world a lot of things about ourselves, but only on occasion do we speak the truth. A large problem with this habit is that we usually lie to ourselves in the process of story-telling. We need to stop telling the world what we want them to hear and start telling ourselves what we need to hear. Ask the question. “Who am I?”
Works Cited
Gwynn, R.S. ed. Literature: A Pocket Anthology. NY: Penguin, 2002.
