Summary

In the Author's Note, writer Elana K. Arnold addresses the nursery rhyme which asserts that girls are made of "sugar and spice and everything nice" (185). Arnold rejects this image as it promotes the idea that women are "meant to be consumed" (185). It also contradicts Arnold's personal experience of femaleness which often isn't "sweet and delicious" (185). Arnold addresses society's taboo attitudes toward the natural processes of the female body and also acknowledges her own desire as a young women to be beautiful. Arnold rejects the idea of "a system that creates girls whose bodies seem to belong to everyone but themselves" but also acknowledges her complicity in that system (187).

She references an incident in her youth when a fellow college student held a straight edge razor to her throat and threatened to rape her. She questions her own response to the...