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Body Image In Marge Piercy's Barbie Doll

1361 Words6 Pages

Society has created an image that is unrealistic for young women to achieve. In the poem, “Barbie Doll”, written by Marge Piercy, a child is normal until she grows up and hits puberty. The teenage girl receives comments from a classmate about her body and the way it looks. She is a healthy young girl, but she started to believe all these comments and was apologizing for the way she looked. She would beat herself up about not having a body that looked like all the other girls. The young girl tried multiple diets and exercise, but none of them worked. Soon, she began to lose herself, personality was changing and took matters into her own hands. Finally, she reached perfection, but only after she was dead.
The title of the poem really resonates …show more content…

Piercy voices her opinion about the on going stereotyping of young women in social settings. Women are expected to uphold a specific image and perform at a certain level.Throughout the poem, Piercy describes the extreme measures that the young girl took in order to achieve the ideal image that she so longed for. Feminism is strongly implied in this poem. The author describes all the things that is wrong with the young girl based on a guy's comment. Piercy advocates for the young girl voice and rights to look how she wants …show more content…

Symbolism is found in the poem, through the toys that the girl use to play with when she was little. “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”, the author use these toys to symbolize that the girls was a normal little girl (Piercy). The use of these literary devices connect to the social context by measures that women take to accomplish society’s view on a woman's

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