How to Triumph Like a Girl

The title “How to Triumph Like a Girl” sets up the piece as a kind of advice-giving poem. The speaker suggests that she will reveal a secret or trick to help the reader learn how to succeed, specifically the way that a “girl” succeeds. It immediately introduces themes of feminism, success, and self-confidence.

The speaker addresses the reader directly, as though talking to a friend. Her tone is direct and conspiratorial, as though she is admitting a secret about herself, much the way women might talk to one another about their personal feelings. The simple declaration, “I like the lady horses best” (Line 1) seems like an innocuous comment. The speaker is having fun personifying the lady horses as proper ladies, intoning “Ears up, girls, ears up!” (Line 6). Midway there is a shift, and the poem becomes about something more personal and serious. By saying “But mainly, let’s be honest” (Line 7) the speaker continues the conceit that she is confiding frankly with a friend and signals that the poem is both candid and meaningful. She continues “I like / that they’re ladies” (Lines 7-8). She imagines the lady horses are like her or that she is like them, confiding that they set an example for her to follow. She absorbs and owns the essence of the “big / dangerous animal” (Lines 8-9). The horses reflect her own strength and inspire her toward greater strength. In her last address to the reader she poses some rhetorical questions:

Don’t you want to believe it?

Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see

the huge beating genius machine

that thinks, no, it knows,

it’s going to come in first (Lines 14-18)?

She engages the reader to adopt her belief system. This is the apotheosis of the transformation and makes the transformation seem complete. She is expressing the strength of her convictions that she believes that if someone lifted her shirt they would discover a horse heart underneath her clothes. The heart is so strong and sure that it knows “it’s going to come in first” (Line 18), presumably in its next race. This last movement deals with overcoming self-doubt and embracing self-confidence. The speaker correcting herself that the horse “thinks, no, it knows” (Line 17) emphasizes the difference inside herself between “thinking” she is as powerful as the horse and “knowing” she is as powerful as a horse (Line 17). Immediately after asking the reader if they desire to believe in her horse-like majesty, she drives it home, emphasizing that the horse has no need for belief at all. The horse instead has flat certainty in its own power to surpass all other members of its own species.

She then encourages the reader to overcome their doubts by asking them to “lift [her] shirt and see” (Line 15) for themselves the “huge beating genius machine” (Line 16). By framing the challenge with “Don’t you want to believe it?” (Line 14) the speaker suggests that self-confidence and belief in one’s abilities is a matter of choice; the reader can believe it if they “want to” in a simple matter of free will and choice. This ultimately ties back to the poem’s title, suggesting that the way to “triumph like a girl,” as demonstrated by the raw power and single-minded confidence of the racehorses, is to believe you are capable and worthy of triumph. The act of the shirt is also an act of some transgression. While men can go shirtless in society women taking off or lifting their shirts in public is taboo because women have breasts. To invite the reader to “lift” the shirt of the speaker displays a defiance of social norms and a fearlessness about showing the reader something personal and even vulnerable. Calling for the reader to “lift” the speaker’s “shirt” may also be a call to embrace feminine power in spite of social norms and to admit to or embrace vulnerability, emotionality, the nurturing qualities of breasts, and the heart underneath the shirt.