Hippie Barbie, written by Denise Duhamel uses the symbols of the contemporary life of the fairy-tale lifestyle into reality. The words and ideas used in this narrative poem give fantasy a different perspective. It is inferred that the speaker is a female Barbie specialist, who reflects her knowledge by using the popular Barbie doll as the main character. Throughout the poem, she gives key points that have female perspective; for instance, kissing Ken, thinking about having mixed-race children, and walking a poodle. She establishes a story-telling tone, which introduces Hippie Barbie as a real woman. The speaker is trying to address to all Americans that know deeper into Barbie doll life. By using the word “hippie” she gives a sense of rejection, opposition and liberalism towards things. Hippie Barbie reveals the ugly truth about the society based on appearances that we live in.
Using personification as her strongest tool, she uses Barbie to establish a somewhat comic parallel world with real women. The author introduces her poem with; “Barbie couldn’t grasp the concept of free love. After all, she was born into the world of capitalism where nothing is free.” Barbie’s romantic life involves having an on and off relationship with Ken Carson. The author throws the first important term “free love.” This term has been used since the 19th century which describes a social movement that rejects marriage, especially for women. The free love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery; a term which is seeking for freedom. As well, she used the preposition “into” which expresses a direct involvement with capitalism. This is understood because she used the word “bo...
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... In World War II it was also used as a symbol of deviance towards Britain. Again, the author is using allusion to history, and giving a feeling of fight and opposition. The “stuck-together fingers” represent the relationship with the feelings of repression. The author automatically turns everything around by changing the perspective of her narrative poem and going deeper into the main character by exposing her true feelings. At the end of the poem Barbie is clear when she says she felt a little like Sandra Dee, which is the complete representation of traditional American values.
In the “Hippie Barbie” we can find an awkward cut in the lines which make words stand out in a way that gives a different meaning to the sentence. As well, there is no specific rhythm in the poem. It is interesting to observe that every word at the end of each line ends in a consonant.
When the narrator first compares her Barbies, she thinks that she needs perfect and new Barbies to fit in with everybody else. The narrator does understand that her family does not have money, but she simply works around it. Although, she wants more Barbies it was unlikely for them to get them. The narrator says, “Because we don’t have money for a stupid-looking boy doll when we’d both rather ask for a new Barbie outfit next christmas. (14-15)” The narrator has to make do with what she has. She can not have a boy Barbie because it is not in her parents budget. This affects her and it makes her lose confidence in herself because she does not have what everybody else has. After the narrator receives her partially messed up Barbies, she says, “And if the prettiest doll, Barbie’s MOD’ern cousin Francie with real eyelashes, eyelash brush included, has a left that that’s melted a little-so? If you dress her in her new ‘Prom Pinks’ outfit, satin splendor with matching coat, gold belt, clutch, and hair bow included, so long as you don’t lift her dress, right?-who’s to know. (16)” Even though the Barbie has a melted left foot, the narrator moves past this. She will just cover it up with a dress. The narrator wanted new and perfect Barbie’s in the beginning, but she realized that these Barbie’s are not everything and she can make them her own. She is not defined by her Barbies. Sandra Cisneros used symbolism and characterization to describe how the narrator had a hard time coming into her own identity and finding
“Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy and “ David Talamentez on the Last Day of Second Grade” by Rosemary Catacalos are two poems that show a unique view into society and the roles society expects people to fill. Sometimes those expectations can lead people to take drastic measures or even cause defiance in some people. The irony of this is that it seems the more we push people to be what society wants the more it drives them to be what they don’t want.
In both poem “ Barbie Doll” by Merge Piercy and “ homage to my hips” by Lucille Clifton, they both expressed the different way on how our society wants us, women to look and act in order to be except into the society. Our society condemned any women who are to act differently from our norms. In this society and in every culture aspect they are always stereotype, women always been taking advantage of no matter what century we are on. In “Barbie Doll” the author tend to provide more effective critique of society expectation about our body image than “homage to my hips”.
“If Barbie was designed by a man, suddenly a lot of things made sense to me,” says Emily Prager in her essay “Our Barbies, Ourselves” (Prager 354). Prager’s purpose for writing this essay is to explain the history of Barbie and how the doll itself has influenced and continue to influence our society today. Prager is appealing to the average girl, to those who can relate to the way she felt growing up with Barbie seen as the ideal woman. Emily Prager uses a constant shift between a formal and informal tone to effectively communicate her ideas that we view women today based upon the unrealistic expectations set forth by Barbie. By adopting this strategy she avoids making readers feel attacked and therefore
206 paragraph one, (line 1), Sandra Cisneros reveals a model of how girls see themselves in the future. The girls felt the dolls represent the same story and scenario each time they came together and play with each other. The attitude, style and quality of dolls. The interchanging of clothes, character's likes and dislikes as depicted the deception by a doll; from a child's point of view. The girls noticed that when the male Barbie doll drops by the other Barbie would steal him away. A typical boy meets girls; girl thinks boy is cute; boy leaves with the opposite girl. This is a reflected of Sandra Cisneros’s short story "Barbie-Q, "p. 206 , paragraph 1 , (line 2 , 3 , 4 , and 5 ) . The girls are tired of the social scene the boy Barbie represents. They only want to play among themselves without any boys. The girls enjoyed looking forward to Christmas and receiving gifts of clothes for their Barbie dolls. This is also, reflected in the insults the girls shared among their future Barbie dolls. In the short story "Barbie-Q,” by Sandra Cisneros, the girls enjoyed going to the flea market, purchasing used clothes for Barbie dolls. Barbie dolls meant so much to the two little girls because they didn't care if their Barbie dolls were wearing hand-me-downs; second hand doll clothing sold alongside the street. The joy came from undressing and dressing up the dolls. The girls even found career clothes to match up to their doll's future. In the short
For starters the title, “Barbie Doll” holds a meaning. It symbolizes the ideal figure of a female body. Society creates this ideal that is embed into every century. It is never ending. It is intended that she must have the twig like arms and legs, the minuscule waist and nose,
Marge Piercy wrote the Barbie Doll poem in 1973, during the woman’s movement. The title of the poem Barbie Doll, symbolizes how females are supposed to appear into the society. In the poem Barbie Doll, the main character was a girl. She was described as a usual child when she was born. Meaning that she had normal features that any person could ever have. Piercy used “wee lipstick the color of cherry candy” as a smile to describe the child before she has hit puberty. After the character hit puberty, the classmates in her class began to tease her saying “you have a big nose and fat legs.” (Piercy pg. 1) Having a big nose and a fat leg is the opposite of what females are supposed to be presented as in the gender stereotype. In the society that the girl lives in, follows the gender stereotypes that presented females as a petite figure with a slender body. These expectations made the character go insane. She wanted to fit into the society so she “cut off her nose and legs and offered them up.” (Piercy pg. 1) Even though the girl was “healthy, tested intelligent…” (Piercy pg. 1) no one saw that in her, but her appearances. In the end of the poem the girl end up dying, a...
The little girls wanting Barbies with perfect outfits goes with the “ideal” image a girl should have at a young age. They are influenced by society to like playing with Barbies, to like the colour pink, to basically become a girl in society’s point of view. Cisneros is showing the development of children and how they’re made to play their roles in society. The author is trying to show how girls don’t really have a choice in how they’re guided towards liking “girl things”. The story shows the reality of women and how their opportunities are limited by things that are out of control like being born into poverty and have to live below an average lifestyle, “So what if our Barbies smell like smoke when you hold them up to your nose even after you wash and wash and wash them” (Cisneros, 1991, p.448). This pertains to the inequality in the work place, government, how some women are limited because of their gender and are prevented from becoming a successful
In Marge Piercy’s, “Barbie Doll,” we see the effect that society has on the expectations of women. A woman, like the girl described in ‘Barbie Doll’, should be perfect. She should know how to cook and clean, but most importantly be attractive according to the impossible stereotypes of womanly beauty. Many women in today’s society are compared to the unrealistic life and form of the doll. The doll, throughout many years, has transformed itself from a popular toy to a role model for actual women. The extremes to which women take this role model are implicated in this short, yet truthful poem.
The two girls seem to be demonstrating the need to conform to the pressures of society by the way they play with the barbies. After the girl explains the appearances of both barbies, she goes on to explain the same story they play over and over. One of the Barbies steals the other Barbie’s
Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” is a great representation of how society’s expectations have brainwashed women into trying to look and be something they are not. This poem is important because society needs to start doing things to make women feel better about themselves instead of bringing them down. Girls need to start realizing from a young age that no one is perfect nor can they reach the unrealistic expectation of looking like a Barbie. Stop treating woman like objects and dehumanizing
The Barbie is a plastic, man-made female toy, which has perfect facial symmetry, unnatural body dimensions, and perfectly unblemished white skin. In Chris Semansky’s Overview of “Barbie Doll,” he explains that the Barbie “is invented to show women have been socialized into thinking of their bodies and behavior in relation to a male-controlled idea” (Semansky). The title directly alludes to the Barbie toy, which represents a design of a man-made construction of the female image that shows an unnatural human form that could only exist inside the imagination of men. Throughout both “Barbie Doll” and “The Birthmark” you will find the female protagonists seeking an ultimately perfect form, free of the characteristics that those around them see as unworthy. It is as if they are chasing the blueprint of perfection that is present in the Barbie. The original Barbie came with three outfits a bathing suit, a tennis outfit, and a wedding dress (Semansky). Her outfits clearly symbolize restrictions forced on female privilege, identity, and autonomy, where “she embodies the ideals and values of her middle-class American community” who expect her to “spend her days at the country club and her afternoons cooking dinner for her husband” (Semansky). This is directly similar to the “outfits” those around the women in “Barbie Doll” where the girlchild is born
At first glance, the poems The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake, and Barbie Doll, by Marge Piercy appear to have no tangible similarities. However, upon further analysis and interpretation, they can be seen as somewhat akin. In these two poems, the harsh treatment of children, the use of imagery, and children’s self-image in the poems are comparable. The differences between the two poems include the time period in which they were written, the background of the characters, and the characters’ reactions to the problems that they are faced with. Although the surface level information in the poems Barbie Doll and The Chimney Sweeper is easy to contrast, if one dives a little deeper,
In the beginning of “Barbie Doll”, pleasurable and unpleasurable imagery is given so that the reader can see the extremes girls go through to be considered perfect.
Stone, Tanya Lee. The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact on Us. New York: Penguin Group, 2010. Print.