In this essay, I will explore the themes of various poems from “Kinky”, by Denise Duhamel. The poems “The Limited Edition Platinum Barbie” and “One Afternoon When Barbie Wanted to Join the Military”, reflect upon the oppressive beauty standards and gender expectations in our culture and hyperbolize them to a dystopian point. Duhamel uses Barbie as a metaphor throughout these poems, and addresses our culture’s misogyny, while making Barbie a first person character and giving her a voice. The poem “The Limited Edition Platinum Barbie” critiques our culture’s narrow standard of beauty. Our society is consumed by the fantasy and perfection of the idealized body.
While Marge Piercy (“Barbie Doll”) and James Dickey (“The Leap”) have created poems that are about women who were trounced by society’s pressure, each poem depicts different elements to reflect the narrator’s voice and convey their message. Piercy highlights her character’s struggle with the preconceived vehemence on women’s role in our society from a young age. “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) On the other hand, Dickey uses nostalgia to describe the character in his poem “fastest runner in seventh grade” (Dickey) and how he remembers the main character.
The girl in ‘barbie doll’, wasn’t perfect. She had a big nose and fat legs. Her classmates remind her of this, as does society. She was fine as herself, but others weren’t. They had to pressure into thinking she needs to change.
Since the dawn of time, expectations and stereotypes have been placed on women that limit them. Among these expectations are maximizing their femininity, or nulling it. The latter is the case in the short story by Sandra Cisneros, “Barbie-Q”, where the narrator's point-of-view while at a flea market with her family, searching for decent remaining toys after a toy warehouse fire, suggests that growing up in a male-dominated society destroys and forever alters women’s view of themselves. Cisneros uses the symbolism of destroyed dolls, typical “men's items” overcrowding the space, and the description of needing to search for pieces of feminine toys.
The poem Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy is a short poem that talks about a little girl who is born just like any other little girl. She plays with dolls and little ovens and messes around with makeup. She is fine and unbothered with her life till she hits puberty. Around that age she has a classmate tell her “you have a big nose and fat legs.” She was a girl who was healthy, strong, and intelligent but, she was apologizing to everyone for what they saw.
The book relates several times back to the thought of the mid 50’s where women are thought of as objects. This is shown in the text”she looked in the window, the way so many women sit their sadness on a elbow.”(pg. 11) The girls in the novel grew up with the idea that looks and appearances are more important than other things. It is shown several times that even with the society pressing
American families today seem to be assaulted from all sides. The changing climate in the work role of women has cause much concern about the fundamental survival of the family. Divorce rates are sky rocketing; marriage is being postponed or better yet rejected; fertility rates are plummeting and wives and mothers are rushing out of the home into the work force. The migration of women to the work force has displaced the institution of family. In her their book, The Employed Mother in America, Nye and Hoffman illuminate this major phenomenon of American life.
With the constant fear of ridicule and discrimination, we still try and define ourselves, though we are always under the society’s scope. Marge Piercy, in her poem “Barbie Doll”, gives us a look at the influence of our surroundings and how something as innocent as a doll can trigger these insecurities. Our strive for acceptance and “perfection” can cause major emotional damage on anyone who identifies as a woman. Young girls look at these depictions of “perfect” bodies, such as a barbie doll for example, and compare themselves. In the poem “Barbie Doll”, Piercy talks about a young girl who she described as “...healthy, tested and intelligent...” (247) but, she was picked on by peers who said she had “a great big nose and fat legs.”
The poem Barbie doll by Marge Piercy is about a little girl who grows up only to kill herself for not living up to society’s standards. The speaker shows how she had a normal childhood and was happy playing with here baby dolls and toy stove. However, during puberty, her body changed and everyone noticed. She was criticized for her “fat nose and thick legs”. She tried to change by dieting and exercising, but soon tired of doing so.
It is so easy to get caught up in meeting other people’s expectations that it’s hard to see our real personalities shine through. Piercy’s “Barbie Girl” begins with the reader learning about the girl’s natural gifts, as she was depicted as strong, smart, and had great “manual dexterity”. All of these descriptors were not seen as feminine and ladylike. Throughout the poem, we get a glimpse of how this girl was being trained to think and act differently than she naturally would. In this world, being quiet, always smiling, and dieting were some of the expectations for females that took away the girl’s motivation to openly be herself.
A girl walks into the toy store and pulls into the doll section. She stares at the imitation doll and the Barbie doll standing next to it. She contemplates between picking the black hair doll and the perfect blonde doll. In a quick second, she grabbed the doll. The Barbie doll.
The freedom of being able to change Barbie’s clothes into her various wardrobes sold gives the young children playing with her the sense of individuality. Although Barbie has brought a lot of controversy to the table within the years it has been on the shelf, her portrayal has not changed because after all she is just a doll,
Barbie dolls extend girls an invitation to a ‘‘plastic society’’ that doesn't accept the genuineness each of us possesses. They present a role model impossible to accomplish. The characters didn't have names, they could hold a symbolic representation of society’s judgment. The girls had the first dolls just like they wanted, but they desired to cover all of the imperfections on the dolls damaged in the fire with new clothes such as the ‘‘Prom Pink outfit’’ (Cisneros). Thereupon, no one would notice the
The story tells the reader about how two girls, each owns a Barbie doll with their one outfit piece and they made a dress out of worn socks for the dolls. One Sunday, they both went to the flea market on Maxwell Street, where the dolls of the other characters in Barbie were sold with lower price as a big toy warehouse was destroyed by fire. They did not mind to buy the dolls at the flea market even though the dolls were flawed, soaked with water and smelled like ashes. Barbie is widely pictured as a successful girl, who is perfect in every way; with her beautiful face, a slim body, nice house, secured job and a handsome boyfriend which is the fancy of every girl. The story tells the reader of the expectancy for women to have this immaculate figure, ignoring the fact that each person has different body fat percentage and body mass index which may affect their sizes and weights.
Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” takes a sarcastic approach to backlash at society and send the reader a message about what beauty really is. In “Barbie Doll”, A Barbie doll is used to show and symbolize what society views as what a female should aspire to become “perfect”. “Barbie's unrealistic body type…busty with a tiny waist, thin thighs and long legs…is reflective of our culture's feminine ideal. Yet less than two percent of American women can ever hope to achieve such dreamy measurements.”
