"Barbie Doll"
Marge Piercy
In this satirical poem, Piercy tackles the issue of female body-image. Specifically, she places blame for the recent crisis on children's toys and people who judge others solely on a few aspects. The use of synecdoche accurately sums up the tragic effect the culture of bodily perfection seemingly manifest in Barbie dolls has on girls.
Throughout the poem, diction seems not to line up. For instance, "magic" is related to "big nose and fat legs." Descriptions like "tested intelligent" are followed by the girl's "apologizing." Despite the puzzling connotations, this mismatched diction serves to highlight the dichotomy of people's perspectives of beauty and what these perspectives actually do. This girl was told explicitly that becoming a woman will be a time of happiness and development and implicitly that this time should bring about typical Barbie-like appearances in her. However, after becoming a woman, she can do nothing but seek forgiveness for fate's decision not to imbue in her what others expected.
Eventually, the failure of the descriptions of womanhood to meet up with its reality drove the girlchild to end her life. Still, her suicide was caused by only a fraction of herself: "So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up," (Piercy, 836). The girlchild's insecurities about her body implanted by her Barbie dolls and reinforced by her classmates grew in her mind like a tumor such that she defined herself solely by her nose and legs. Her intelligence and strength meant nothing to her because she thought they meant nothing to everyone else.
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