Poem Analysis: Marge Piercy's Barbie Doll

“Barbie Doll”

In such a cruel society young woman tend to feel pressured with keeping up a perfect image or appeal just to please everyone around them. The speaker in this poem is third person, the audience is very clear focusing on society and parents raising young girls. The overall theme is how society has a standard of how pretty someone is. It causes woman to feel pressured into looking and acting a certain way. A “girl child” is born and once she hits puberty, she is humiliated for what other people point out and see as her flaws. Soon she tired of trying so hard to be what she was not. She eventually got what she wanted which was to look pretty, though it cost her own life. In this eye opening poem “Barbie Doll”, Marge Piercy gives a great representation of how society’s view affects a young woman’s self-image using similes, gruesome symbols, and strong irony.

The young girl is smart and driven, but her peers only see her for her big nose and legs. She was always apologizing, exercising, and dieting. Eventually she could no longer continue the pretending and happy faces. The speaker compares the girl child’s good nature to a fan belt, “Her good nature wore out like a fan belt” as a simile (lines 15-16). She can

only put up the front for so long just like the fan belt can only last for so long. The girl child cannot deal with the pressure being put on her just like a fan belt would wear out with too much pressure. The speaker does a good job when comparing these two things in this simile and shows symbols of what happened when the girl child “wore out”.
The author uses symbolism to express the brutal measures the girl child took when trying to be better looking. The girl child wanted to be the perfect looking Barbie doll so bad that it did not matter what she had to do to get it. The speaker harshly shows how she was willing to mutate herself in the fourth stanza, “So she cut off her nose and legs and offered them up”, in this symbol (line 17). It shows what the young girl was willing to do just to be someone she was not. Even if it meant putting herself in harm’s way. It shows the pressure young women feel just to fit in or to mold to please everyone else. The speaker’s irony really helps set the feeling for this symbolism.
The speaker uses lots of irony throughout the poem. Especially the very last line where the speaker says “To every woman a happy ending”, in a very sarcastic tone (line 25). It was like saying all every girl dreams of is looking the way one should in society’s eyes. Even in the end all the people do is comment on how pretty she looks. It’s sad because it’s all fake, the makeup and the putty nose. How the girl child looked was not the most important thing, but yet it was even in her last moment.
The use of similes by comparing the girl to the fan belt and what she would go through leads to the symbols showing what those pressures can do to a young girl. It used symbolism to show how far society’s judgment can really destroy a young girl. The irony of the speaker helps with better understanding the meaning of the poem and how the author wanted the poem to be perceived. The irony pulls the similes and symbols together, helping understand how to take the speaker’s view on society and the parenting adults in the world. Society tends to only value woman for what they look like.
The use of the author’s similes, vivid symbols, and irony really sets the message, being how society puts too many expectations and pressures on woman through gender role stereotyping.

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

them.