Barbie Doll clearly displays a strong sense of feminism. It specifically attacks the modern day pressures that women are faced with as far as appearance goes. The author seems to have the opinion that women are pushed to make themselves perfect in the eyes of society. I think this is why this poem has a very negative and almost angry tone to it. Barbie Doll has a few main themes that can be easily recognized; the main ones that Piercy addresses are the pressures of being a female and the desperate attempts to please others. In this poem, when the subject gets older she is told all the ways that she is not beautiful, while all of her good traits are ignored. Ultimately, it shows how the pressure of trying to measure up to societys standards can cause an end to someones life. The poet makes the point at the end of Barbie Doll that for some women, fulfillment might only come in death.
At the beginning of the poem the girl is portrayed as a typical little girl without a care in the world. Her parents and family members presented her with gifts and toys like any other child would be. She receives gifts like Barbie dolls, play ovens and pretend make up. Piercy uses an anaphora in the first stanza as she repeats the word and three times (2,3,4). This is an effective strategy because it stresses the amount of gifts the girl is given to play with. These toys mentioned by the poet are important in establishing the topic of this poem in more ways than one. First, it contrasts the simplicity of childhood with the rude awakening of adolescence. This stanza could be considered a binary of childhood versus adulthood. She starts out like any other little girl with toys and games presented to her. She seems content with these play things until she hits puberty and a fellow classmate makes her aware of her fat legs and big nose. Also, the fact that the author mentions these things at the beginning of the poem might be hinting at the fact that the essences of beauty and a girls place in society are inscribed into a little girls brain before she can even realize it through the toys that she plays with.They present the idea of what beauty is. They are exposed to make up at an early age and realize that that is what women use to improve their appearance. One of these gifts that girl receives is a Barbie Doll. This is an important factor in the poem because Barbies are what little girls play with and dress up, so they may assume that they are supposed to look like she does. However, it is clear that in reality no real human being looks the way she does.
Another effective strategy that the author uses to develop the statement she makes is to state the good qualities of the girl that were overlooked by her fellow classmates. She lists positive words such as healthy, intelligent, strong, and drive to describe the subject of the poem. The author sets up a binary in this stanza that is one of the main points of the poem which is superficial beauty versus actual beauty. Despite the endless amount of good qualities the girl had that actually make a person beautiful, everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs (11). Those two descriptions of her, fat nose and thick legs, continue throughout the poem. The author says she went to and fro apologizing for not being good enough. This helps the reader realize that because fat was all people saw in her, that was all she began to see in herself.
There are constant reminders throughout the poem that the topic is the females pressure of gaining acceptance and feeling the need to maintain a flawless appearance. The author uses many words relating to appearance like pretty, cosmetic, exercise and diet. These words are important because they tell us what the public tells the subject of this poem to do in order to become more attractive, in fact it says they advised her to do so. The girls strength finally wore thin as she could not please the people that insisted she improve the way she looked; her good nature wore out like a fan belt (15,16). The use of similes in poetry adds to the creativity of the way an author expresses their ideas. This is an effective strategy because it helps paint a picture of a broken girl snapping like a fan belt. In the next line, the poet uses a metaphor saying that the girl cut off her nose and legs and offered them up to society. This helps us picture the drastic measures she took to gain acceptance. She finally gave into the pressure and did what she had to to be free of the constant disapproval. I assume that the cutting off of her nose and legs symbolized the ending of her life as the next stanza leads to a funeral.
This final stanza is important to the conclusion of the point that the poet is trying to make about outer beauty. She seems disgusted by the vapid tendencies of women to give into the lies of what is beautiful and what is not. The stanza once again contains words that alludes to beauty, such as cosmetics, satin, pink and pretty. At the end of the poem she talks about people looking at the girl in her coffin, pleased over that fact that she finally looks presentable. Even in death, the onlookers were still concerned with her appearance; asking doesnt she look pretty (23)? The last two lines in the poem are very important to the theme of the poem. Consummation at last, states the author, to every woman a happy ending (24,25); these lines sum up the whole point of Barbie Doll. The denotation of the word consummation is fulfillment or perfection. By using this one word Piercy made her point that perfection, or a womans happy ending, can only come in death. For the girl in the poem, this concept seems very true. She spent the majority of her life being judged and looked down upon. The constant pressure to be perfect was too much for her and peace only came in death.
Piercy, Marge. Barbie Doll. Prentice Hall LIterature Portfolio.
Ed. Christy Desmet, et al. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2007
643-44. Print.
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