Analysis Of Marge Piercy's A Barbie Doll

The poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy suggests that girls are fatally and ultimately entrapped by society's definition of what feminine beauty and behavior is. In our society we believe that women should be perfect. We want women to be as flawless as a Barbie doll and in doing so we create many struggles for women because no one can ever achieve that goal. The poem gives off a sense of irony when “society” compares a young girl to a Barbie doll. Our society has an ideal that was created by the influences of popular media and culture that is impossible for anyone to reach. 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.” (Cain 1996) Women aspiring to become as “perfect”

Women have social pressures to conform to particular ways of behaving and looking. The pressures are so huge not all women are aware of such situations. The women are so use to living to conformed ways we label the ones who actually act normal as “weird and abnormal”. Piercy shows how we are unconscious of what’s happening, how a regular girl that is going through puberty judge so badly for being normal. Our social and cultural construct on women’s values society has created has only been about making a profit. Capitalist only care about mass profit disregard the dangerous effects on women. Such companies demean women by calling them fat or ugly because they don’t look like the ideal, forcing them to conform and buy products like makeup and “waist