It's in the reach of my arms, The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I'm a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me.

These lines come from Maya Angelou’s poem “Phenomenal Woman,” a celebratory, first-person affirmation of Black womanhood, bodily confidence, and self-possession. Angelou wrote and performed the poem in the context of the post–civil rights era, when her public voice as a poet and memoirist was closely associated with themes of dignity, resilience, and self-definition. The poem’s speaker answers an implied social scrutiny—why she attracts attention despite not matching conventional fashion-model ideals—by locating her power in embodied presence and inner assurance. The quoted stanza occurs near the poem’s close, where the speaker lists physical markers of confidence as evidence of an irreducible, self-authored “phenomenal” identity.

The passage insists that charisma and worth are not granted by external standards but emanate from a woman’s own bearing. Angelou’s catalogue—arms, hips, step, lips—turns the body into a language of confidence: reach suggests capability, span suggests fullness and strength, stride suggests purpose, and curl suggests joy and self-command. Repeating “Phenomenally” functions like a refrain of self-blessing, transforming what might be judged as ordinary into something radiant. The poem’s larger significance lies in its refusal of narrow beauty norms and its assertion that a woman’s power can be both physical and spiritual, publicly visible yet rooted in private self-knowledge.