Comparison Of Barbie Doll And Beauty

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.

In fact, “...Barbie is so exceptionally thin that her weight and her body proportions are not only unattainable but also unhealthy”( Dittmar, Halliwell, and Ive 283). This fact creates potentially dangerous situation for young girl to be influenced to emulate an unattainable body type. One particular research study conducted by Helga Dittmar, Emma Halliwell, and Suzanne Ive in 2006, found out that young girls, ages 5 to 8-years-old, who were exposed to Barbie, experienced self-esteem and body issues. “This is the first study in which an experimental exposure paradigm has been used with young children, thus offering a methodologically rigorous examination of Barbies as a cause of girls’ feeling of unhappiness with their bodies and their desire to be thinner” (Dittmar, Halliwell, and Ive 283). When 162 U.K girls, ages 5 to 8, were given picture books with either no pictures of bodies whatsoever, images of Barbies, or images of Emme (a doll with realistic body proportion), they young girls who looked at the books were more unhappy with their body image than those girls who read Emme or non body books (Diep par.4-5). Their study did not find these same finding in the oldest girl, however the evidence that Barbie is not influencing this younger population of girls, still points to the need for some type of change as this early pattern of looking up to an unrealistic body image

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

The argument of The Beauty Myth is that as women have received more eminence, the standard of their personal appearance has also grown. Wolf’s position on the issue is that this type of social control is potentially just as restrictive as the traditional roles of women. The Beauty Myth discusses how society’s viewpoint of beauty is detrimental to women because it causes many emotional and psychological problems to women who strive to become “perfect”. This book is important due to the fact it raises awareness to the issues that many young women are currently facing.

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

Society has challenge the true definition of being beautiful. The norms found today expect women to look certain way, to be placed in the category of being beautiful. A woman should feel comfortable in her own skin, but due to societal expectations many women lacks self- confidence. Society expects women to be perfect; perfect body, perfect smile, perfect mentality, perfect everything. But what society fails to realize, is that no one is perfect and shouldn’t be expected to be perfect because it’s impossible. In her poem Barbie Doll, Marge Piercy utilizes setting, imagery, and symbolism to portray the affect that societal expectations have on women’s perception of being beautiful.

Beauty’s innate commentary to Society Concepts of beauty can be portrayed in everyday life. Jane Martin’s play entitled Beauty is the perfect example of how society perceives beauty and the subsequent benefits of possessing these unrealistic attributes. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, this is a phrase that many may relate to and Jane’s play is a representation of this, making it a commentary to society’s unrealistic views of beauty. An in depth look, at how society’s perceptions of beauty affects not only those who measure themselves up to these standards but also those who fit into the mold themselves and this will be the aim of this essay.

Society always had an influence over individual lives, and especially the most on women. Society sets these expectations for women especially concerning their appearance. The poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy demonstrates the cruelty that women of all ages face when they cannot fit into society standards and how it can be damaging to them. Piercy describes an image of a normal girl child who goes through puberty and gets made fun of her changes in appearance.

From an early age, young girls are expected to obtain an unrealistic, idealized beauty. Society places women under subjugation to these appearance standards, which are exemplified through magazines, television advertisements, billboards, and even childhood toys. Airbrushed models in photo shoot spreads and Barbie Dolls of unnatural proportions belie how the average, real woman looks. Marge Piercy criticizes society’s quixotic “beauty” through a satirical account of a girl who succumbed to the pressures of society and ultimately ended her life due to her shortcomings of how the world expected her to appear and behave. In her poem, “Barbie Doll,” Marge Piercy utilizes metaphors in order to indirectly mock and condemn the image that society views as beautiful for women.

Margie Piercy’s poem, “Barbie Doll” portrays the power that society holds on an individual's life. The Barbie doll, not actually mentioned in the poem, is a symbol for the expectations society holds a woman accountable for their entire life. Society expects women to put on this persona of the perfect image; healthy, fit, well dressed, always putting the husbands needs in front of her own. Piercy’s poem exemplifies the standard that woman are held too and the horrors of how society can change a person to fit the standard mold. This has created conflict between a woman’s inner and outer identities and because of this women have made a fake image.

It 's not a mystery that society 's ideals of beauty have a drastic and frightening effect on women. Popular culture frequently tells society, what is supposed to recognize and accept as beauty, and even though beauty is a concept that differs on all cultures and modifies over time, society continues to set great importance on what beautiful means and the significance of achieving it; consequently, most women aspire to achieve beauty, occasionally without measuring the consequences on their emotional or physical being. Unrealistic beauty standards are causing tremendous damage to society, a growing crisis where popular culture conveys the message that external beauty is the most significant characteristic women can have. The approval of prototypes where women are presented as a beautiful object or the winner of a beauty contest by evaluating mostly their physical attractiveness creates a faulty society, causing numerous negative effects; however, some of the most apparent consequences young and adult women encounter by beauty standards, can manifest as body dissatisfaction, eating disorders that put women’s life in danger, professional disadvantage, and economic difficulty.

According to that archaic proverb, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s ironic how we hear and repeat this phrase all the time yet we don’t practice what we preach. A good example of this can be found with the popularity of the Barbie fashion doll. Something as simple as a piece of plastic with fake hair, exaggerated body features, and miniature outfits can instill in young girls across the world the “standard of beauty”. With this fragile, impressionable persona that we have engrained in women over time, it seems as if we are driving them to their own demise. Through the use of modern day media, toys, and fashion, we have been betraying women across the globe by mistreatment, underrepresentation, and by sexualizing them.