A Woman’s Place in Society Explored in Marge Piercy’s Barbie Doll

From the time they are born, girls are influenced by society as to who they should be, how they should look, and how they should act. Americans believe that women should be to a certain standard; pretty, feminine, and especially, thin. The pressures derive from family, media, and friends. Marge Piercy’s poem, “Barbie Doll” depicts a girl who was never recognized for her character and spent her life trying to be accepted for who she was, rather than how she looked.

Sandra Cisneros addresses poverty and unrealistic expectations of women through the lens of adolescent girls, using their youthful perception of a Barbie Doll. Through Barbie’s image of ideal beauty, Cisneros foregrounds the struggles that women, especially those in poverty, face in their attempts to amount to the unrealistic standards of female beauty. Cisneros’s main argument through her short story “Barbie-Q” is that it is impossible to expect women to meet this manifest of beauty, and somewhere along the way of escaping and covering their imperfections they become damaged.

The poem, "Barbie Doll," written by Marge Piercy tells the story of a young girl growing up through the adolescence stage characterized by appearances and barbarity. The author uses imagery and fluctuating tone to describe the struggles the girl is experiencing during her teenage years, and the affects that can happen. The title of this poem is a good description of how most societies expect others, especially girls to look. Constantly, people are mocked for their appearance and expected to represent a "barbie-doll"-like figure. Few are "blessed" with this description. The female gender is positioned into the stereotype that women should be thin and beautiful. With this girl, the effects were detrimental. The first stanza describes the

A little girl’s world begins as such a wonderful place. Makeup, dresses, tea parties and prince charming are what little girls dream of. Marge Piercy uses a variety of poetic devises to convey the theme of stereotypes and the struggle girls face is brought to attention in this free verse twenty-five-line, open-form narrative poem titled “Barbie Doll.”

“ideals are developmentally ingrained in children and adolescents”( Englis 1). The idea of beauty and ideal looks are engraved into people at a young age. The little girl being given a Barbie doll shows this in the poem. The idea of beauty and how a woman should act are represented in the Barbie doll. The primary take away is beauty is not everything.

Like Georgiana in “The Birthmark”, women often find themselves striving to reach society’s expectation of beauty and perfection. In Marge Piercy’s poem “Barbie Doll”, a young girl is finally able to reach society’s version of beauty but she must die to do so. Piercy criticizes the ways “women are socialized into stereotypical feminine behavior” (“Overview: “Barbie Doll”, para. 1) in this poem and suggests that the pressure put on women to meet certain standards of beauty and behavior is destructive. The poem opens with the birth of a “girlchild” and all the “typical toys” that go along with it. When the girl hits puberty, her classmates begin to make fun of her big nose and fat legs. The girl is intelligent and healthy, but the other children only see the imperfections in her appearance. She is told she should behave “coy” and always wear a smile, but the teasing takes its’ toll. She cuts off her nose and legs and offers them up

The hardships the young girl faces ultimately leads to her death, which Piercy describes as an "happy ending" (Piercy 25). This seems ironic because death is not something to be considered joyful, especially when one is being bullied and cast out of society. It is also ironic because everyone finally thinks she is pretty once she is dead: "Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said" (Piercy 23). It is horrible to think that it takes a tragedy, such as death, to get everyone to stop and pay attention to someone who was not accepted in society. This poem has a negative tone because of the extreme measures that this girl takes in order to be accepted by society, even if that means taking her own

Barbie dolls, fairytales, princesses, models, actresses, true love, and happily ever after. The images flash through a girl’s mind as she matures and grows, and as she enters her teen years, she realizes she’s not perfect, she doesn’t have all those nice things she read about and watched when she was little, and it’s distorted her view of herself and on life. Society has started to realize that these images that little girl’s look up to are starting to cause problems in those girls’ futures, and satire has become a strong tool in bringing these problems to the attention of

In Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll" a young girl is troubled by the classification of what it takes to become a beautiful woman. "Barbie Doll" details the image that society projects upon women. From an early age young women struggle to conform to the standards that society has defined for them. Beautiful dolls such as Barbie are frequently the first source of association that young girls have with the image that society has placed upon them.

“Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy is about a girl who is a normal child growing up; playing with dolls, miniature kitchen items and pretend make-up. It quickly takes an interesting turn when a pubescent child makes fun of her nose and legs and she was advised to exercise and diet despite the fact that she was intelligent and healthy. The poem continues on by the girl cutting her legs and nose and a bizarre visual of her laying in a casket with an ending that states “to every woman a happy ending”( Piercy 791). This poem was written by Piercy in 1969 a year in which many women liberation groups were forming and the breaking of womanly roles was taking place. The poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy,

Marge Percy “Barbie Doll” is a social commentary about the demanding pressures that the mass media produces about how women should look like and what type of body they should have. Women in the 1970s faced high standards and these standards still go on to this day. These high demands lead women to go above and beyond to meet standards that society has placed upon them. Some of these drastic measures can lead to consequences. In “Barbie Doll” the main character decided to undergo plastic surgery to fix her “big nose” and “fat legs”. Unfortunately she ended up dying in her struggle to meet the standard that the media has placed on her at an exceptionally young age. Her untimely death is a symbol and the theme of the poem that these women will work themselves to death to meet societies demands and most of the time it is all for nothing. All this women wanted was people to accept the way she looked and not critique her looks and it was not until her funeral day, when it no longer mattered, that she finally got that acceptance.

Analyzing the word, "beautiful" in this stanza, one should perceive that she is not actually singing about the outside of her, but what she consists of emotionally and mentally on the inside. She reveals that her thoughts and emotions are of worth and value and they are of her opinion. They are consumed through her, and no one else and if anyone disagrees, she does not take that into affect. Her diction is actually pretty precise. To quote a famous cliché, beauty is not skin deep. She explains that the beauty is the sentiment.

As a consequence of Barbie being an “IT Girl”, the fantasies of young girls are ignited to the highest level of amusement. While they dress and make adjustment to their Barbie Dolls, young girls could not resist giggling. Plain to see, young girls idolized Barbie and harbour sensational feelings that when they grow up, they too would be like the perfect and beautiful Barbie, with all the perfect curves and bulges in the right places. This means that, young girls are dreaming that sooner or later, they too would have a perfect anatomy for a