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Barbie Doll

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In the poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, she illustrates the effect that society has on the expectations of women. This expectation is that women, like the girl described in the poem, should be perfect. She should know how to cook and clean, but most importantly she should be attractive according to the impossible stereotypes of womanly beauty. Many women in today’s society are being compared to the unrealistic physical looks and life of the Barbie doll. Through the past many years, the Barbie doll has gone from a popular toy to a role model for actual women in today’s society. The extremes to which women take the Barbie doll as a role model are implicit in this poem.
The opening line of the poem says, “This girlchild was born as usual,” which suggests that as soon as a female child is born, society expects her to learn the role she will play once she hits puberty. Therefore, showing the readers why little girls are given dolls at a young age to illustrate how they should act and appear according to society. Once girls learn the roles they will soon have to play in their own lives, “the magic of puberty,” hits and girls immediately begin applying these ideals to their own lives. As if the attempt of girls trying to conform to the Barbie doll image isn’t enough, they also have other people in society telling them that they’re not perfect. “You have a great big nose and fat legs,” says a classmate to the girl. This type of pressure from peers and society can slowly but surely destroy the little confidence women may still have in them.
In the second stanza of the poem, Piercy describes the girl as healthy, intelligent, and strong. Yet these positive qualities given to the girl by Piercy could not keep people from criticizing her, making her feel inferior. “She went to and fro apologizing,” demonstrates her loss of confidence with the people and society around her, who kept putting her down. The girl gives into the hurtful things people say about her: “Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.” Therefore, the girl lets the people around her push her into the direction of society’s standard beauty, instead of accepting her own unique beauty.
The third stanza of the poem starts off by saying, “She was advised to play coy, / exhorted to come on hearty, / exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.” In the girls mind she is becoming fake to herself just so can she can please society; this is what makes her dissatisfied. She soon grows tired of being fake, to please society and “cut off her nose and her legs.” The girl decided to get plastic surgery to fix her nose and her thighs, to try to be accepted by today’s society. As a young girl, her nose and thighs were always the features being criticized by her peers, which shows what kind of negative affect stereotypes of idealized feminine beauty has had on her mentally as she grew up.
In the final stanza of the poem, the girl takes her own life because she no longer loves herself for what she is becoming. Piercy says, “In the casket displayed on satin she lay / with undertaker’s cosmetics painted on.” Now that the girl is gone, her physical body still shows that the stereotype still has an effect when you have passed because it still shows the ideals of putting make-up on to not look ugly. Before the girl’s death, she had many more plastic surgeries done on her face because she had “a turned-up putty nose.” With all these surgeries the girl thought that she could restore her own confidence, but yet she was still not pleased with herself after they were done. Although “everyone said” she looked pretty in her casket, she was not able to hear these compliments that the people around her were giving.
Was all this pressure on the girl by society to be perfect like the Barbie doll worth her death? Women will always do what they can to be pretty to society, but they’ll only ever be as pretty as they feel inside.

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