The pressures of living in today’s society are enormous. Whether you are a Barbie or a Ken, everyone is expected to be successful, to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and to be beautiful both inside and out. When Marge Piercy wrote “Barbie Doll” in 1973, these same pressures to succeed were already in place for the young people coming up in the world. Throughout the ages, it has always been difficult to be a female and to mold to whatever role you were destined to play, whether it was as a scullery maid, a housewife and mother, or a powerful player in the business world. We sometimes forget those same pressures were and are put on young men as well. They have always been expected to be the provider, the protector, and the powerful businessman. Above all, look your best.
Piercy is focusing on the outside beauty in this poem, and what happens when someone smashes a young girls self esteem. But where Piercy writes “Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:/You have a great big nose and fat legs” (lines 5,6) she could have been writing about a male or a female. The passages that refer to feminine items and ideas could easily be changed into masculine form. Where the young girl is “presented dolls that did pee-pee/and miniature GE stoves and irons/and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy” (2-4), a young boy would be given plastic soldiers, toy guns, racing cars, little pretend shaving kits. Where “She was advised to play coy” (12), a young man could be advised to be strong. When “she cut off her nose and her legs/and offered them up” (17,18) the only thing that would have to change, and still show the horror that this young person must have been living, is the word she to he.
When we, as a society put such pressure on our children to be perfect, there can only be an unhappy ending. In real life, there is no fairy tale existence, and we must each be happy with the way we are. Piercy knew this, and this poem is screaming at us to get that point across.
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