Barbie Doll Poem

Society controls the minds of the youth. In society, you’re always expected to act a certain way and look a certain way. The poem “Barbie Doll” was published in 1973. This poem was written by Marge Piercy during the midst of a feminist movement in America that redefined the lives of many women. The poem was written in the point-of-view of a third person narrative. And there are four stanzas total in this poem. The first stanza is about the unnamed girl’s childhood, second stanza is about her puberty, third is how she is being judged, and the last stanza is a solution to all this, which was her death. Piercy’s style of writing is mostly free verse; hence the poem doesn’t have any rhyme pattern. Piercy (being a feminist) also tends to write mostly

As many other people in this world, Piercy suffered from depression. “She did not fit any image of what women were supposed to be like.” (“Marge Piercy: Biography”). Perhaps “Barbie Doll” had been written from her own personal experience to show what she had gone through as a teenager growing up in society? In Piercy’s biography, it says that, “She went from a pretty and healthy child into a skeletal creature with blue skin give to fainting.” (“Marge Piercy: Biography”). So, reading this, “Barbie Doll” had definitely been related to her experience. Although Marge Piercy did not exactly die the way the girl did in the poem, but I suppose she was dying to be herself on the inside. In most of Piercy’s poems and other literary works, she expresses change. She dreams of social change, and feminist revival. Feminism plays a vital role in Piercy’s works. She wants to empower women, not emasculate men. “In the casket displayed on satin she lay with the undertaker’s cosmetics painted on, a turned-up putty nose, dressed in a pink and white nightie.” (Piercy, lines 19-22). The girl in this poem undeniably committed suicide. The stanza states that the girl lays with the undertaker’s makeup on. The word “undertaker” means a person whose occupation is preparing dead bodies for burial or cremation and making arrangements for funerals. The “undertaker’s makeup” conveys a figure of speech, it had not been actual makeup it seemed to be the makeup of the