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Marge Piercy's The Barbie Doll

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The poem Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy is a short poem that talks about a little girl who is born just like any other little girl. She plays with dolls and little ovens and messes around with makeup. She is fine and unbothered with her life till she hits puberty. Around that age she has a classmate tell her “you have a big nose and fat legs.” She was a girl who was healthy, strong, and intelligent but, she was apologizing to everyone for what they saw. She dieted and exercised to try and be better and she put a smile on her face to make it all seem okay but, it got tiring and she couldn't do it anymore so she gave up her nose and legs. With that being said it could mean various things so take it as you will. The end of the poem you see her in a casket with a new nose and makeup and essentially she looks like a doll. Everyone who is there to see her comments on how pretty she. She is said to now have a happy ending. This poem talks about how this girl was just an innocent girl who didn't have any issues with herself till she reached a certain age. Other peoples comments is what made her become self conscious and felt the need to please others. She put herself through so much to get to this perfect image and eventually gave up. She gave up her nose …show more content…

She was a political organizer and took part in a lot of different issues, feminism being one of them. In her free time Piercy wrote, through the poem Barbie Doll you can see how real life issues seeped into writing. The social issues really came through in this poem because this little girl was morphing to be this image that society told her to be. Around that time a woman’s voice was belittled and she was expected to change to be this person that everyone told her to be. People then didn't clearly see the consequence that young girls especially were going through just to try an attain this unattainable

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The poem "Barbie Doll" by Marge Piercy has a profound meaning to it. After reading it a couple of times, I found the theme by analyzing multiple things. I figured out the theme because of the author's use of figurative language and the outcome of her plot. The theme that I discovered was; people change people for the better or for, the worse, but it is upon them how they take it in.

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Poetry Speed Dating: “Barbie Doll” Oftentimes art serves to question societal norms and expectations, causing the viewer to rethink existing and outdated traditions. Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” utilizes a third person narrative to describe a young girl’s struggle with her weight and physical appearance. The poem begins in the girl’s childhood, then briefly illustrates her inner conflict and the realm of outside forces adding to her stress and anguish regarding her appearance, which ultimately lead her to commit suicide. As she seeks physical perfection, her acquaintances encourage her relentless endeavor for beauty, even going so far as to praise her dead yet manicured body in the casket. Through a bitter and resentful tone Piercy emphasizes her feminist message, arguing that the societal pressures placed on young girls corrupt their innocence, ultimately leading to a life spent striving for unachievable perfection and an inevitable demise.

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The poem Barbie doll by Marge Piercy is about a little girl who grows up only to kill herself for not living up to society’s standards. The speaker shows how she had a normal childhood and was happy playing with here baby dolls and toy stove. However, during puberty, her body changed and everyone noticed. She was criticized for her “fat nose and thick legs”. She tried to change by dieting and exercising, but soon tired of doing so.

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“Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, makes me feel some type of way in an uncertain sense. I feel like our society tries to make it seem as if a woman has to be perfect on the outside. Its so much pressure put on women, from weight loss commercials even to what guys post on insta-gram with a caption of “Hot” or heart eyes. Its almost as if society is saying of well if you don’t look like this then you don’t look good. That isn’t the case at all, the bigger problem is the fact that women are starting to be so insecure and so uptight within their selves they cant even see there true beauty at finest.

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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.

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