The poem’s central theme is the idea of physical appearance; specifically, the relationship the woman in the poem has with her own appearance. The expectation the world has for what the woman should be frames both the woman’s relationship with her appearance and her relationship with her own emotions. In the first stanza, the wall of the girl’s room is described as “pink, with speckles” (Line 7). This color is traditionally associated with young girls and the image they’re expected to project onto the world. As the girl becomes a woman, she leaves the pink room behind and searches for something more.

Although the mirror protests that it is “exact” (Line 1), “not cruel, only truthful” (Line 4), the woman instinctively knows that what she sees is not the whole story. Instead, she finds herself “[s]earching [her] reaches for what she really is” (Line 11). The mirror is not as objective as it pretends. It only reflects the surface of a person—the face shown to the outside world. Here the mirror becomes a metaphor for society as a whole. While the woman understands that what she’s seeing isn’t the real truth, her reflection is still “important to her” (Line 15) because it’s what determines her place in society.