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.…
Take a stroll through the Brandenburg Gate; to the banks of the River Spree and you will be spell bounded to see so many classical sculpture and masterworks at one single place, a rare sight! There stands one of the world’s most intriguing and fascinating cultural treasures, the Berlin’s Museum Island.…
After reading "Barbie Doll," I cannot help but agree with the argument in which the author is trying to make. To be a woman in today's day and age means always being told how you should dress and act based on society's standards. There is so much controversy concerning how women should appear, and this is due in part to the media's depiction of how a woman should look. The ideal woman used to have curves, but now women are expected to have a super tiny waist but still have larger breast and a large but; these are standards with which woman have had a nearly impossible time to meet. Between new diet and workout plans, it is easy for a woman to get mixed up with an unhealthy lifestyle of starving herself and exercising too much which leads to…
The poem “Barbie Doll” is a poem concerning a young girl who has let the societal expectations that America puts on young women destroy her. The poem starts out by explaining a small female child who is just like all young girls. She had dolls and miniature ovens and lipsticks for the dolls, but when she hit puberty and her body began changing a classmate called her fat (Piercy, 687). This seems to be the beginning of all of her internal battles and self-esteem issues. The next stanza describes all the wonderful characteristics that this young woman should have been very proud of. She was a healthy intellectual who was also quite strong and skillful with her hands (Piercy, 687). The second stanza is predominantly sad to me because she possesses many of life’s more important qualities and it is a shame that she was unable to comprehend that. By my standards intelligence is a more prestigious quality to possess over beauty. The image that she owns is not incorrect in an empirical sense, but it is one that America does not accept as being the definition of the perfect woman. The girl’s human…
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…
Marge Piercy ever herd this name before? Well if you have, did you know she was the founder of Leap track Press? Marge Piercy is very well known as an American poet, novelist and social activist. Many of he founded work has been graded as best-selling. Piercy has a goal to have her feminist voice be herd by society. She shares her opinions threw the characters she makes in her writing and poetry. Piercy wrote the poem Barbie Doll, and in this poem she states woman do not need to fit into society’s point of view of what a woman should look and act like. Piercy has a fascinating history and high valued awards, but what was Piercy’s message to her audience when Barbie Doll was published in 1973.…
Something that was important to me when I was younger was Barbie dolls. When I was younger i played with a lot of dolls and would not let my sister touch them. I would beg my mom for every doll and extras that I thought was cute. For Christmas I got a lot of Barbies and since then i started having a lot of them. As I got older i stopped playing with them and gave them to my little sister.Even she dosent play with them no more,they just sit in a toy…
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…
Majority of core curriculum classes, instructors evaluate students’ knowledge by administrating exams of the subject. English courses require essays to examine the students’ skills of writing. Although many students write essays they do not obtain the skill to write a good essay because they have difficulty in writing well structures essay. In “A Grown-Up Barbie,” Jane Hill writes a well-developed essay about a personal experience and by writing a good essay she was able to appeal to the audience that would view her work. “A Grown-Up Barbie,” was able to write a well-written essay because it is composed of style, relativeness, and focus on the…
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…
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.…
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…
No matter how old you are Barbie will still be a part of your childhood memories. Barbie is a fashion doll that has been changed throughout the years to suit the styles that were trending that year. Barbie has always had a big influence in the pop culture. Fashion is one of the major changes Barbie has developed throughout the years especially in what was trending in that specific year. The people’s interests have also played a big role on Barbie.…
In the beginning of the poem, the girl is very young and given toys. As stated, “This girlchild was born as usual and presented dolls that did pee-pee/ and miniature GE stoves and irons/and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy” (Piercy, lines 1-4). The use of the word “girlchild” demonstrates she is defined by gender from her infancy. From a very young age, the girl was taught to fit into a society ruled by gender stereotypes and the pressure to look a certain way. It is believed women should cook and clean in the household. This girl grows up striving to live up to society’s standards. When getting further into the poem it is said that, “She was advised to play coy, / exhorted to come on hearty, / exercise, diet, smile and wheedle” (Piercy, lines 12-14). This quote shows the sexism a young woman faces in society. Her words, “coy” and “hearty” are dichotomous and therefore unachievable simultaneously. It explains that a young woman should play modestly and be cheerful, meanwhile also maintaining a skinny figure. This is a list of what a woman should do and act like in order to fit into society, but is nearly impossible to achieve. Piercy uses very strong words to express her points about feminism and unnecessary ideals that women still face…
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…