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Society's beauty standards essay
Analyzing Barbie doll of Marge Piercy
Analyzing Barbie doll of Marge Piercy
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Marge Piercy's poem, "Barbie Doll," takes an interesting view on women and society. The poem describes a female child, who is born and given a Barbie doll. When the girl progresses through puberty, someone denotes that she has a big nose and fat legs. Although she is an astounding and resilient woman in every way, society only sees her physical imperfections. As she matures, she attempts to achieve everything possible to change and be the woman everyone wants her to be. Eventually, she has enough of society's feedback and cuts off her nose and her legs. The day of her funeral, she was dressed up beautifully and given a false nose. That day, everyone thought she looked perfect. Piercy's poem, "Barbie doll," can be interpreted as a stunning
“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”.
In The Barbie Doll, the author writes about a girl' s life. The author starts off by describing her childhood. She was given dolls and toys like any other girl and she also wore hints of lipstick. This girl was healthy and rather intelligent. Even though she had possessed many good traits she was still looked at by others as "the girl with a big nose and fat legs". She exercised, dieted and smiled as much as possible to please those around her. She became tired of pleasing everyone else and decided to commit suicide. During her funeral those who she had tried to please in the past were the ones to comment about how beautiful she looked. Finally she had received the praise she was longing for.
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.
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,
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.
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.
“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
The poem, "Barbie Doll," written by Marge Piercy tells the story of a young girl growing up through the adolescence stage characterized by appearances and barbarity. The author uses imagery and fluctuating tone to describe the struggles the girl is experiencing during her teenage years, and the affects that can happen. The title of this poem is a good description of how most societies expect others, especially girls to look. Constantly, people are mocked for their appearance and expected to represent a "barbie-doll"-like figure. Few are "blessed" with this description. The female gender is positioned into the stereotype that women should be thin and beautiful. With this girl, the effects were detrimental. The first stanza describes the influence that a child is placed into during early childhood. Girls are expected to play with "dolls" and "stoves and irons," the usual toys that relate to the old-fashioned duties of women. A young girl begins to learn what she should be for society and not to deviate from the norm. The tone used in this stanza is quite silent and simplistic at first,...
Figuratively speaking, it can be inferred that since Barbie was not satisfied with her appearance, she sought out methods to change them. Barbie wanted to fit in and since everyone was making fun of her appearance, she decided that the only solution was to change what other people make fun of her about, to something that they would like. This shows that Barbie wanted to look like what everyone liked so badly that she would have to go as far as to cut off her own nose and legs. Another reason why fashion should be changed is due to the fact that fashion promotes a body image that is detrimental to women. The body image that fashion promotes is a severely underweight girl and women naturally, are not severely underweight.
In Barbie Doll, Marge Piercy uses morbid visual imagery as she describes the girl’s appearance during her funeral.
Author, Marge Piercy, introduces us to a young adolescent girl without a care in the world until puberty begins. The cruelty of her friends emerges and ultimately she takes her own life to achieve perfection in “Barbie Dolls” (648). At the time when all children are adjusting to their ever changing bodies, the insults and cruelties of their peers begin and children who were once friends for many years, become strangers over night caught in a world of bullying. A child who is bullied can develop severe depression which can lead to suicide; and although schools have been educated in recognizing the signs of bullying, there is an epidemic that has yet to be fully addressed within our schools or society.
Her poem, “Barbie Doll,” tells the story of a young girl who was short-lived. She was beaten down by society's expectations of what she should be. The poem was a major eye-opener for many, especially considering the time period it was written in. It helped to put the inappropriate and materialistic standards that women continued to be held up to on full display. It broadcasts the effects of these insane standards with an uncensored, real and raw approach.
In “Barbie Doll,” by Marge Piercy, the speaker’s tone is remorsefully cautionary because she aims to protect females from the societal standards that caused the female subject of the poem to commit suicide. Early in the poem, the speaker illustrates the teen prior to her death: “She was healthy, tested intelligent, / possessed strong arms and back, / abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity” (7-9). Clearly, the girl had the potential to be very successful, as a result of her many natural gifts. However, she was constantly harassed and nagged because she had a “great big nose and fat legs” (6). Even though she had all the attributes of a very successful woman, she was still abused by her fellow classmates because she did not uphold the societal
In Marge Piercg poem, "Barbie Doll", portrays how women might feel compelled and brainwashed into looking and being something they're not. By the end of the poem, the girl child of the poem cuts off her "fat nose on thick legs" (Piercg 378) just to please everyone else and have a moment of looking beautiful even though at this point she is lying dead in a casket. Piercg pulls together the absurd way society normalizes expectations of women that are not quiet normal. Women play a huge part in the continuation of our society at large and Marge Piercg engages the reader to think about the ways society can make or break the image of a woman. Society portrays an ideal body and characteristic for women to live up to by encouraging them to "exercise, diet, smile, and wheedle" (Piercg 378) in order to become accepted and acknowledged.