Growing Up In Marge Piercy's Barbie Doll

After reading Marge Piercy’s poem Barbie Doll, I was suddenly blown away. The poem thoroughly navigates through all the obstacles a young women between the ages of 13-18 go through in this society. I fell in love with this poem after reading it because it reminded me of my childhood and the obstacles I faced growing up. The emotions expressed in this poem are ones I’ve experienced on my own.

Puberty is something we all dread, but secretly long for. In the midst of throwing away the barbie dolls to throwing on a pair of beautiful pumps, its easy to say that every girl cannot wait to grow up. In the poem the speaker illustrates precisely by stating “Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said /You have a great big nose and fat legs” (5-6),

This leads us to our next line that Piercy stated in her poem “In the casket displayed on satin she lay”(19), now reading this line at first was a little confusing but it made sense. What Piercy was implying is that what made this girl unique was no longer there. At first I thought the girl literally died, but after furthermore, reading I realized that what really was “in the casket displayed” was her dignity. Everyone has their own opinions towards plastic surgery, in my case I don't see anything wrong with. As a matter of fact, there was actually a time where I felt as I needed to get my nose down, which bring us back to line 6”You have a great big nose and fat legs.” Plastic surgery is passable to a certain extent. However if you're trying to get a complete makeover , I don't agree because everyone should love themselves the way they were born;the features that they picked up from their parents. We are so intrigued by plastic surgery because we see it happen all the time by celebrities whom we look up to. As I had mentioned before, there was a time that I felt uncomfortable with my nose and I felt the need to get it down. If I was offered a chance to get my nose down for free, back then I would have taken that offer in a heart beat however, looking back at it now I love my cute petit nose. It’s a physical feature that I picked up from my mother. I learned to accept my unique feature about myself and that all comes with maturity and