Preview

The Theme Of Perfection In Marge Piercy's Barbie Doll

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
60 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Theme Of Perfection In Marge Piercy's Barbie Doll
As presented within the extremities of beauty, is the elusive refinement of the doll-like stature as unhealthy aspirations, borderline obsessions, is inspected in Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll”. The esoteric abilities placed within the internalized struggle of perfection is noted in its absurdities of paradoxical situations, of under and overstatements of tasks and figures in the crude irony of everyday life.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    1. What elements of Barbie does Prager’s analysis identify? What new picture of the doll does Prager arrive at as a result?…

    • 359 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    I think that Marge Piercy's titled her poem "Barbie Doll, because the way that everyone had expected her to look was similar to the comparison of a Barbie Doll. Therefore she was teased, even though she had many triats that was worth more than looks they went unnoticed because physically she was not attractive. She stated "In the casket display satin she lay with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on, a turned up putty nose. This is the way that is used in the poem, which means that, even though that those are the looks that people perfer, they are not the most attractive in her eyes. (Stuck-Up) The point that William Shakespeare is trying to make even though his mistress is not the prettiest of them all, hestillwould much rather be with her.…

    • 189 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of my favorite poem is “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy. “Barbie Doll” is a irony poem. A Barbie is beautiful when she is a little girl. But when the Barbie grow up, her appearance is changing. People start to judge the adult Barbie does not meet a beautiful standards. The adult Barbie apologize to people people, then she cut off her ugly nose and plum legs. The Barbie change a nice nose and a spindly legs. The adult Barbie become a perfect Doll.…

    • 285 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Barbie: The Ideal Woman

    • 274 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Society today, has changed people in the way how they act, and dress. The short story Barbie Q explains that a Barbie is the ideal woman. The Barbie is an example of what women believe to be perfect. The quote “So what if we didn’t Get our new bendable legs Barbie in nice clean boxes and had to buy them on Maxwell street all water soaked and sooty”(Cisneros). This quote means that anyone would buy a Barbie for a cheaper price because they didn’t have the money at the time and who would care if the dolls were wet or smoked. For example the barbie with the melted leg putting a dress on the doll would cover the leg. this event talks about women these days where men rate the women from very beautiful to ugly as they show in the story where the…

    • 274 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Why trade natural skin for plastic? Marge Piercy addresses this issue, though indirectly, in her poem "Barbie Doll". Piercy presents an innocent young girl, but conveys that she has fat legs and a big nose. Piercy explains that the child was a normal kid, not bad looking, not in bad shape, but simply does not meet the expectation of not having fat legs and a big nose. She is encouraged strongly to do this, and encouraged strongly to do that, but she can not fix herself up; The pressure is too great, the demand too high- she kills herself. Ironically, she looks pretty in her casket, and in this way Piercy is ironically saying that it was not worth it. Piercy shows that the destructive impact of social influence to meet the ideal look can…

    • 1126 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Barbie-Q

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Cisneros opens her tale with a possessive pronoun: “yours”, which confounds readers and draw their immediate attention. Without delay, they are then brought into the world of Barbie Dolls: “yours is the one with mean eyes and a ponytail” and “mine is the one with bubble hair”. Here, we are overwhelmed with details of the dolls’ costumes - “Red Flair”, “sophisticated A-line coatdress with a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat”, “white gloves”, etc. - listed out with eagerness. Readers right away gain a hint of story’s subject. However, while the “Barbie-Q” deals with a popular theme of struggle in the materialistic world, dolefully, it is told by a girl, troubled at an age so young.…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis Essay

    • 1076 Words
    • 5 Pages

    I’ll admit it; I absolutely loved playing with Barbie’s as a child! I must have had like twenty of them. She had everything: a dream house, Ken, plenty of friends, and a slender body with all the right curves, everything I dreamed of having when I grew up. “En Garde, Princess!” by Mary Grace Lord, challenges why every girl loves Barbie. Her article appeared in the online magazine Salon under the “Mothers Who Think” department on October 27, 2000, before the launch of a new doll line called the Get Real Girls, which were created by Julz Chavez. In this article Lord uses repetition, ethos, comparison and name calling to convince the reader that Barbie will soon encounter a fierce competitor, a better role model, which may finally dethrone her as the best selling doll of all time, or at least “punch a few holes in her sales” (423).…

    • 1076 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy is about a girl who struggles with her body image. The speaker in the poem acts as an observer; watching the girl encounter different experiences as it related to her body image. Today’s generation is much similar to the life of the girl in this poem. Girls are forced to keep up with rising standards that are overwhelming and destructive. This poem uses form, imagery, and word choice to express how society chooses not to accept girls who do not represent the “ideal” woman.…

    • 741 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Marge Piercy's Barbie Doll

    • 1143 Words
    • 5 Pages

    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…

    • 1143 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Marge Piercy's Barbie Doll

    • 1512 Words
    • 7 Pages

    When looking back on our lives, we remember the joyous memories we shared with the ones we love most, along with the not so impressive moments that we wish we could bury away in our backyards. Some of the most humiliating and trying years of our lives took place during the developmental stages. The times you were left lingering in the foggy valley between childhood and adulthood. Puberty. You would be lying if you said this period did not hit you like a truck. The poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy embodies the struggles that adolescence girls endeavor throughout this beautiful and natural season of their young lives.…

    • 1512 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Gender stereotypes start the day the baby is born for example, if the nursery has been lovingly painted pink ,crammed with frilly, lacy clothes and stocked with dolls , a clear message has been sent to that baby girl.On the other hand,a different message is sent to males by filling their blue-walled room with toy soldiers, sports equipment and race cars.As the children grow up , the messages continue.The male will be expected to participate in team sports, while the girl will only be aloud cheer for him on the field.Society will demand that the young lady is attractive, while the young man will feel no such pressure.These continuing expectations…

    • 350 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The worldwide role model for generations of women, Barbie, does not fall short of perfection. Although, what many girls do not know, are the horrors of what a real, life-size Barbie would be like. Dr. Margo Maine, in her book, Body Wars, reveals the truth behind a human Barbie: “If Barbie were an actual woman, she would be 5'9" tall, have a 39" bust, an 18" waist, 33" hips and a size 3 shoe” (“Barbies” 1). While these characteristics might sound appealing to some women, this “perfect” frame would cause a woman many problems (“Barbies 1). With these proportions, Barbie would not likely menstruate and would need to walk on all fours as if she were a household pet (“Barbies 1). The doll’s head, hands and feet…

    • 2953 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Seen through Rose-Tinted glasses:” The Barbie Doll in American Society. By Marilyn Motz; supports the highly debated topic that the toy Barbie produced by Mattel is a bad influence, on young girls. Motz is claiming that the young female child envisions herself as Barbie, and with Barbie resembling an older more mature woman. Something that Barbie’s age group cannot obtain, in till they grow older and more mature themselves. However, Barbie is just a toy, her resemblance, her actions, as a doll is, solely up to the child. Adults looking into their daughter’s childhood are simply over thinking what a three to eleven year old can produce inside her mind.…

    • 920 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    “Girl” & Barbie Doll

    • 2455 Words
    • 10 Pages

    In the past, women were always considered the subordinate gender that was expected to powder their nose and stay at home to be a homemaker. Even now, despite the movement to liberate women from stereotypical gender roles, women are still seen as the inferior gender that is discriminated against in society. As suggested by the popular Barbie doll created by Mattel, the idealized image of a woman in our patriarchal society is one who takes care of the home and is flawlessly beautiful with perfect skin, long legs, small waist, and slender figure. The Barbie doll is used as a tool for patriarchy in that it reinforces the notion that women should be domestic workers and maintain a feminine outer appearance. Also, patriarchal values affect girls starting at a young age as they unconsciously begin to believe that Barbie is what a woman should look and be like. With the appeal and popularity of this doll for the past several years, it is difficult to alter the notions of womanhood suggested by this doll. This implies that patriarchy is something we can not permanently overthrow because it is so deeply rooted in our society.…

    • 2455 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The young girl in the story is constructing her entire identity on the ideal body of her Barbie Doll, in which her future step-mother is compared to. The line, “Barbie was sex without sex”, suggests that the girl is being inculcated with the idea that her self-worth is dependent upon her beauty as a sex object. Real girls should have many other things on their minds other than their body and sex such as school, friends, and family; but these other points are completely absent from the story. The girl explains that her new barbie was “who [she] wanted to be”, with the idealistic figure of having “torpedo breasts, the wasp waist, [and the] tall-drink-of-water-legs”. The bodies of dolls are negatively impacting young girls to make the wrong decisions regarding their bodies; this is where eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia originate. Despite the girl’s dead mother prohibiting her from having the doll given by her stepmother, she decided to take it in and let it have an influence on her instead. In addition, the girl’s future stepmother is described as having “auburn curls bouncing in the early May light…[and a] suit of fuchsia wool blooming like some exotic flower” The imagery and the simile used in this excerpt are portraying some perfect female form that’s not usually attainable. The focus on the physical features in both the doll and the stepmother strengthen the message in the young girl’s mind that her worth is proportional to her physical beauty. The story reaches the point where the desire for the idealistic female body is so strong in the young girl that it overpowers the respect she has for her dead mother’s memory, and so she accepts the new barbie doll from the stepmother. By doing this, she may be losing respect, in the long run, not only for her dead mother but also for…

    • 1121 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays