Barbie Doll Marge Piercy

The gloss of this poem immediately underscores its thematic concerns. Barbie is not just a toy dog for young womans but has become a cultural icon of developed America. The snort is the archetype and symbol of the perfect American girl who has physical raise and wealth. She is the prime example of feminine qualities and viewer. Yet as we read on, Piercys description of the young girl is vastly different. She seems, unlike Barbie, to have a great big nose and fat legs. The young girl, however, is entrapped by confederations definitions of debaucher here exemplified by Barbie doll.By consistently contrasting the exemplification and the real, Piercy created a forbidding poem to the highest degree a girls suicide because of tender pressures to be Barbie-beautiful. The theme of the poem is distinct Piercy is alluding to the insufferable conditions of beauty in the modern world and how the desire for such unachievable ideals can lead to death. It too very lots about subscrib ing to brotherly beliefs of femininity, of what it is to be a woman, and not just about physical beauty.The dark and ominous atmosphere in the poem is set by the descriptive details of the poem and the consequent mood that is set by the t whizz. Piercy employs a matter-of-factly way to describe the details of a fat girl and her developing up years. Yet the choice of images employed is unique and powerful for they take out images of childhood. Dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of flushed candy evoke innocence in the playthings of childhood but these images ar immediately contrasted with the girls big nose and fat legs. This occurs over again in stanza two where the girl is described as a thinking(a) and intelligent girl almost full of potential, abundant sexual accept and manual dexterity. The positive physical image of this young pubescent girl is shattered at the end of the stanza for she needed to feel bad about herself f or having a fat nose on thick legs. much(prenominal) a contrasting descriptive method is one of the ways that Piercy employs to underscore the irony of the poem even more.The sarcastic tone that Piercy uses is most blatant in the last-place two stanzas. Here, we see a girl who has been compelled to subscribe to ludicrous social beliefs of looking like a barbie doll. She needs to play coy, exercise, diet, grinning and wheedle. These are archetypal images of femininity. Here, Piercy moves beyond a description of physical beauty but one of social expectations of femininity. The girl is compelled to follow social norms of what it is to be female both physically and socially.The opening stanza, with its images of dolls, stoves, and lipsticks also reveal the aforesaid(prenominal) intentions of how from a young age the girl is compelled to buy into a social definition of what a female is. The poem becomes much darker and Piercys sardonic tone and scornful attitude towards such soc ial belief becomes much stronger in the final stanza where she employs irony powerfully. The girl is described as having interpreted her own life for she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up. In the final stanza, she is described as looking pretty dressed in a pink and white nightie and having a turned-up putty nose. Here, the image is one of a barbie doll. The girl has been transformed into the image she could not attain in life and could only do so in death. This is a demoralize thought that Piercy is attempting to communicate to readers women die trying to achieve impossible notions of beauty and perhaps the only way to do so is in death. Such a reading is certainly accentuated by the final lines of the poem work at last. To every woman a happy closure. The happy ending can seemingly only be found in death. The lines in this stanza are then charged with irony and the irony evokes a intellect of sadness and shock. There is no real happy ending for although she d oes lastly for her quest for beauty and perfection is consummated she dies in the process. The poem consequently echoes with how society often compels women to subscribe to expectations of what is feminine like a Barbie doll. It also thereby reveals the very misplaced qualities that society holds with regards to women. Women are objectified as dolls and playthings.