Marge Piercy's Barbie Doll

Society has a very strong mental image of what the ideal young woman looks, acts, and behaves like. Whenever a young woman fails to live up to these outrageous ideas they are belittled and told to change what they look like and how they behave. This is exactly what happens to the girl in Marge Piercy’s poem “Barbie Doll” (236). The pressure that society was putting on the shoulders of this girl became too much one day. She finally decided to give up on being herself and become who the world wanted her to be. The end of the poem seems to be speaking of her suicidal physical death. Actually, in reality, this is the death of her personality, of everything that is against society’s ideals. Therefore this poem is about the effect that society has
There are about four different tones used. The first tone encountered is a story telling tone; it seems as if the speaker is telling a story, neither positive nor negative. Just a story, neutral sounding almost emotionless as the speaker talks about the young woman’s childhood. However this tone quickly changes to one of judgment in line 5 where it says: “then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: / you have a great big nose and fat legs” (5-6). After this line, however, the tone changes yet again; this time to a peppy, happy, upbeat one. The poem stays this way for the next three lines as the speaker lists out all of the girls positive qualities. These qualities just so happen to be qualities that society believe that she needs to be a good housewife. After this line the poem reverts back to the earlier tone of judgment for the next couple of lines. Just like before the tone changes rapidly and sounds helpful. Only the advice that the the speakers reports the young woman got is anything but helpful. She is advised to “play coy” and to “come on hearty/ to exercise, diet, smile, and wheedle” (13-15). In these lines the young woman is told that she is not good enough the way she is naturally; that she needs to change to be accepted. Then the poem reverts back to the earlier neutral tone until the twenty-third line where, as stated above, the tone changes to one of
The first symbolism encountered is the title of the poem itself. The title “Barbie Doll” is used to represent what society has long viewed as the perfect woman: tall, thin, and inhumanly beautiful. These are unreachable standards that the girl in the poem spends many years trying to achieve. The “dolls that did pee-pee” and the “miniature GE stoves and irons” all are used to symbolize qualities that a good housewife must possess (2-3). These show that from a very young age society attempted to train the girl in the story to fit into their perfect Barbie mold. Another item of symbolism that is used in the poem is in line 4 where it talks about her being given “wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy” (4). The symbolism here is that the lipstick she receives represents the fact that people do not see her as beautiful, that society believes that she needs to cover up her natural beauty to fit their mold of the perfect woman. Even the “pink and white nightie” is symbolism (22). The pink of the nightie is a symbol for her new found femininity; the white for her sexual purity. Both of these items are things that society deems highly important. The final symbolism in the poem is her death and funeral in the last stanza. This whole last stanza is a symbol for the death of every little thing that makes her herself, everything that sets her apart from other