Marge Piercy Barbie Doll

In the poem “Barbie Doll”, written by Marge Piercy describes the life of a girl all the way from her childhood years to her death. Through the poem, the reader develops an understanding of the pressures females face when growing up. Women are influenced by many negative factors that contribute to them modifying their looks and behavior to “fit it”. In this poem, the reader clearly can see that even from a young age females are almost misled by society to try and be this perfect image of a Barbie Doll. There are many factors that play a big role in allowing girls to feel that way such as: childhood experiences, grade school influences, and social media. From a very young age it seems that females are almost trained to fit a certain role. Many

With the ever presence of Facebook, Instagram, twitter, TV reality shows, and magazines there is always going expectations of what females should look like. It has become a growing trend among celebrities to post pictures of their not so realistic bodies trying to promote exercise and nutrition. While the celebrities may exercise and eat healthy there is absolutely no way that any human beings body can look like that without some type of plastic surgery or photo shop. In Piercy’s poem she states that the girl was “exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet smile, and wheedle (13-14).” In these lines the reader can clearly see how much the female’s image of herself can be distorted into thinking that they need to look and act a certain way. For many women, their whole life is consumed by trying to fit in. Also, the author states in lines 15-16 that “Her good nature wore out like a fan belt,” shows how hard she has tried just to try and be what society wants her to be. In today’s society especially seeing all of these celebrities on the internet and TV and how good they look makes women try even harder to fit that certain image that society portrays women out to be. Society is a very harmful thing, it pressures many people into believe that what is fake is real. In the eyes of society if you