Stereotypes In Marge Piercy's Barbie Doll

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In Marge Piercy’s poem “Barbie Doll” Piercy illustrates the dangers of conformity and stereotypes. “Barbie Doll” also illustrates how society has control on women’s lives. Now a days a woman cannot be herself without being judged because she’s not acting or looking like the rest of the women. The girlchild in the poem is surrounded by stereotypes. She seems to have no choice in her playthings. She is “Presented dolls that did pee-pee/ and miniature GE stoves and irons/ and wee lipsticks the color cherry candy” (lines 2-4). In the poem readers start to see that the tone of the poem changes when her body starts to change, “The magic of puberty, a classmate said:”(line 5). That’s when readers realize that her body changing is what is causing …show more content…

They are qualities every woman would be proud of, but the main charter couldn’t be proud of those great qualities because society was judging her because she had an athletic look. She couldn’t be proud of them either because she was trying to look like a model/ Barbie doll like society wanted her to look. In order to please them she was overlooking those great qualities she already had. “Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs” (line 11): this last line in the second stanza is very powerful because it’s saying despite everything she’s doing to fit in, society would always see her as a fat nose on thick …show more content…

It shows that if girls do not conform to the society’s norms, they will be excluded and will never be able to fit in. The only way anyone could be able to fit in is by completely changing the way they look and are. Many teenage girls are forced to think that they have to look a certain way in order to be perfect, even though these teenagers are already normal and healthy they try to alter their beauty in order to conform to the norms of society. Many teenagers would do whatever it takes to be able to feel pretty and be accepted by society even if means going through surgery at a young age. Most girls aren’t strong enough to take in all the pressure of looking perfect and end up taking their lives. Young women in the world today are forced to change the way they are so they won’t be judged and called names (in other words get bullied) just because they aren’t as girly, hearty, and skinny as the other young women around them. This doesn’t only affect teenagers, it affects women in general. It affects

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