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Barbie Doll

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Submitted By cloudyes2005
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The response for the poem “Barbie Doll”
The poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy seems to be a strange poem. When I first read it, I thought that is a poem for children, but the ending of the poem is weird. Then I read it again many times. I remembered that one time, when I was in my art class. We were talking about the image of the Barbie Doll and the American culture. The body shape of the Barbie Doll was changing over time to meet the standard which depends on the culture and society at the specific time.
This poem is about a little girl, who is perfectly normal about physical. As many other little girls, she plays with doll, and household toys. She is healthy and intelligent. But people don’t think she’s beautiful when they look at her. Everyone only see that she has a great big nose and fat legs. She is advised to be on diet and exercise. But then she is exhausted and dies. She cuts of her nose, her legs and offers them. Lying in the casket with the fake putty nose, the nightie, and pain, people now start seeing her as a beautiful girl.
The little girl is a normal girl just like the others. The “doll that did pee-pee,” the “GE stoves and irons” are common toys for little girls (Line 2-3). The toys show them how should they expect their body to be and the role of them in the society. The “wee lipsticks” is a toy which is faked from the domestic accessory of adult (4). The idea of the “wee lipsticks” seems to be guiding the little girl to pay attention to their outside looks. The Barbie doll has the standard body shape that most of the girls want to have. They use the Barbie doll as a beauty measure tool to judge the beauty of other girls. As “the magic of puberty,” many girls really care about their body. They can hurt themselves just to get the body shape that they believe that it’s beautiful. The little’s girl classmate makes a comment about her big nose. Her classmate puts a slight upon her when she makes that comment.
She is just like the others. “She was healthy, tested intelligent,/ possessed strong arms and back,/ abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.” (7-9) Everything seems normal in her. Why does she have to “fro apologizing?” (10) Because people think she is not beautiful. The little girl feels guilty about her nose and her legs. She feels guilty for not being beautiful. Everyone don’t look inside her to see her moral and human value, all they see is “a fat nose on thick legs” (11).
The girl would be very sad, and upset when she knows how people look at her. People advise her to “play coy,/ exhorted to come on hearty,/ exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.” (12-14) Do people know how does she feel about herself? Can they feel that she is upset? Yes, they know her feeling. People also want her to “smile and wheedle,” to fake her feeling. She has to change herself when she’s perfectly normal just to make people accept her. The process of changing herself doesn’t last long. The girl hurts herself when she tries to change the way people look at her. So the only way left to make people accept her is to cut off her nose and her legs. Then she offers them up. The part of the poem that she offers her nose and her legs when she dies reminds me of an article on Yahoo! which I read today. There is a 6-year-old girl names Elena Desserich. She was diagnosed with brain cancer. Before she dies, she wrote hundreds of little love notes and hide it around the house. When she dies, her parents start to find out about the notes. The parents believe that the notes are telling them that she was looking over them. In this poem, the little girl’s nose and legs is her note to send to everyone. First is to all the girls, she wants to stop them from hurting and losing themselves like what she did. Second is to other people who have good shape and like to judge people by their appearance. She wants to let them know that she cannot change the way she was born. People need to open their mind and accept others who don’t have the beautiful look like they do.
The little girl dies. Her “casket displayed on satin she lay” (19). She has “a turned-up putty nose,/ dressed in a pink and white nightie.” (21-22). All she gets now is a fake nose and beautiful nighty to cover her lost legs. Then everyone say “doesn’t she look pretty?” (23) What is the definition of a pretty girl? People get the wrong idea about pretty and beautiful. They care about the outside look too much. The girl finally is accepted to be pretty. She loses her whole life to be accepted.
This is a sad poem that reflexes our society. People too worry about the look that they forgot to examine the personalities and characteristic deep inside a person. The value of a person is not coming from their body or their outside beauty. It comes from the inner beauty. All the young girls need to believe in themselves that they are pretty. That’s the only way to help them become more confident. Giving up themselves and following people’s ideal is not a possible way because human never get to be satisfy.

Work Cited
Piercy, Marge. “Barbie Doll.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. 9th ed. New York: Norton, 2005. 835-836. Print.

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