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The importance of beauty in society today
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Beautiful is a dangerous word in today’s society. Parents can potentially ruin their daughters self-esteem by telling them how pretty they are and how much of a little princess or diva they are. When realistically they should be telling those girls how smart they can be, how imaginative they are, and how if they work hard they could be a doctor one day. These parents are unwittingly setting their daughters up to be obsessed with their image as toddlers, and this kind of pressure can have detrimental effects on a young woman’s psyche. These damaging impacts don’t affect just teens and young women either; women in their 30’s-40’s can often be even more infatuated with their appearance due to their aging bodies. Marge Piercy’s poem, “Barbie Doll,” shows readers how these unattainable views on beauty can have sociological effects, cause psychological damage, and even lead to suicide.
These effects and damages are nothing new to women. They’ve just become more prevalent and noticeable in the twentieth century, and it may seem that women of this day and age are going to extremes to change their bodies but the past suggests that it’s been this way for centuries. The Chinese bound girl’s feet to keep them small because at that time having small feet was desirable. Early European and American women wore corsets that were so tight they would faint or miscarry a child, and it was even possible that women would have their lower ribs removed so as to have a more slender waist. At one point, women also wore white paint on their faces because being pale was more deemed more feminine, but it was also deemed that the face paint was toxic because it had lead in it (Chrisler & Saltzberg). It would seem that throughout history women were...
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...ork force is competitive, marriages become competitive, and they feel like they’re losing control of their lives; so managing their body becomes something they can control and change if they want to (Wingate).
In summation, women always have and always will have it harder than men do. The generations keep passing down this derogatory semblance of a woman’s worth. It won’t change any time soon either, but hopefully, mother’s will remember the hardships they have suffered growing up and they will do their best to instill a better sense of value in their daughter’s minds and less value into their appearances. Obviously, wanting their child to be healthy is a facet every parent wants, but there needs to be a line drawn to show where it stops being healthy and starts becoming an obsession with beauty and thinness. The future of the world’s little girls depends on it.
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.
Every woman grows up knowing that they one day want to be beautiful. In Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” she gives an in depth look at what negative effects the concept of beauty can have on an individual. From infancy to a full grown adult woman, beauty has been a way of thinking and lifestyle. As a little girl you are given petite shaped, blonde, blue eyed dolls. While boys are given brawny soldiers and mechanical toys.
The poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy has such a deep message that will instantly pull the heartstrings of many individuals within the world upon reading. Each and every person standing on the planet has had a moment in their life when they do not feel as if they can meet anyone 's standards. They also feel as if they are too fat and ugly to fit it to today’s society. We all have been told some very hurtful words in our lives, some that stick for longer than others, within the creases of our fragile brain. We continuously tell ourselves that it 's going to be okay at the end of the day but the real question is, will it real be okay? When initially looking at the title, one may come to the conclusion that the poem is
The phrase, Beauty is only skin deep, does not appear to apply in this era of idealism and perfectionism. From the time babies are born through their adulthood, they are raised to conform to specific social roles. Specifically, little girls are expected to grow up becoming perfect feminine beauties created to bare children and care for their homes and husbands. Sandra Cisnero's “Barbie-Q” and Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” portray the female body and gender roles through the standards imposed by the society that is one of the flawless physical beauty; just like the Barbie doll; the perfect figure, hair, nails, and face and ready to adhere to the expected roles of bearing children, taking care of husband and doing home chores. Throughout their work, in addition to criticize "the way in which women are socialized into stereotypical feminine behavior" (Overview: 'Barbie Doll'), both Cisnero and Piercy hold that escape is not possible from these ideals and that it is very destructive.
Marge Piercy has ironically paired a suicidal girl with the well know child’s toy Barbie. By giving the poem the title “Barbie Doll”, Piercy shows how society expected the girl in the poem to attain the desired qualities of a “perfect woman”. This masterpiece allows the reader to see inside the world of this troubled young woman who differs from the norms of society. After reading this poem I concluded that society in some ways compares woman to Barbie dolls, which in turn reflects the qualities that society values about women. Piercy does a wonderful job at showing societies perspective on the “perfect woman”. Her use of symbols, tone, and the comparison between the girl and Barbie allow the reader to see how society expects certain traits from females.
“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 female body is socially constructed in different ways over categories concerning race, sexuality and gender. Society has a huge control over women’s body and sometimes influences them to make “choices” that are harmful to themselves. This paper focuses on Fausto-Sterling’s The Bare Bones of Sex and how medical research has failed to consider the impacts of social factors and not just biological ones on bone health; Thompson’s A Way Outa No Way… in which eating disorders are solely claimed to be due to society’s norm of physical appearance and the restriction of eating problems to just white upper- and middle-class heterosexual women; and lastly Davis’s Loose Lips Sink Ship which addresses the increasing popularity of labiaplasty in the United states and the outrage shown towards African women who indulge in female genital mutilation. The following paragraphs will discuss the ways in which the female body has been neglected in society and “choices” made to conform to society’s norms.
It also pressures women to constantly try and strive towards this ‘beauty myth’ the media have constructed and make men’s expectations of women’s beauty unattainable, however this is how the media has represented women as for years, Bodyshockers and 10 Years Younger, are just two examples of this. To this extent cosmetic surgery could be considered to be an obligation rather than a choice due to how the media has represented this now normalized technology of science.
In “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, the girl in the poem thinks largely on what others think about her body. For instance, after the girl was compared to a fan belt, the poem states, “So she cut off her nose and legs / and offered them up” (17-18). She rather cut her body parts and risk the chance of death in order to look pretty in the eyes of her peers. She has little to no body image, just how others respond to her physical appearance. In another case, when it is revealed to the reader that the girl is dead, the poem declares, “Doesn’t she look pretty? everyone said / Consummation at Last / To every woman a happy ending” (23-25). Women care too much about their look that they would rather die of a complement on their beauty. When females have others thinking that they are pretty, females feel complete. Marge
society’s depiction of her and lastly the title of the poem embodying the girl’s own affliction. The message though, that I personally took away from analyzing this poem is to be happy with the body and features you are granted and to forget what society may think of you because while you can work out and wear makeup and change your features you only have one body to live in. One of my favorite quotes is “What other people think of you is not your business. If you start to make that business your business, you will be offended for the rest of your life” by Deepak Chopra. Unfortunately for the girl in Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” this mind set was made impossible by society’s standards for her as it is for many young women in todays “thigh gap” obsessed
Throughout history when we think about women in society we think of small and thin. Today's current portrayal of women stereotypes the feminine sex as being everything that most women are not. Because of this depiction, the mentality of women today is to be thin and to look a certain way. There are many challenges with women wanting to be a certain size. They go through physical and mental problems to try and overcome what they are not happy with. In the world, there are people who tell us what size we should be and if we are not that size we are not even worth anything. Because of the way women have been stereotyped in the media, there has been some controversial issues raised regarding the way the world views women. These issues are important because they affect the way we see ourselvescontributing in a negative way to how positive or negative our self image is.
In a world where many are led to believe that they fall short of what society depicts as “perfect”, it is still true that everyone is beautiful in their own way. There are even more demands on girls now a days than there has ever been before. Some may think they need to fit in, so they become someone they are not or they begin to act like a totally different person. “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, illustrates society’s high and unrealistic expectations on the physical appearance of women, while failing to see that a woman’s self-esteem is at risk of being diminished.
Physical appearance of the body has become a fundamental part of identity. To gain social acceptance in society, women feel pressured to meet the standards of what society recalls as beauty. Women have tried to get a liposuction or reconstruct their face to try and attain their significant other's attention and follow what the media depicts as appealing. By eliminating their own individuality, women try to attain this invalid image to feel more confident and feel more accepted. As society becomes more accepting to plastic/cosmetic surgery, women in society will no longer look unique and will become a master race that will eventually brainwash society as individuality will become extinct. This is a result of a woman’s motive to try to obtain the ideals of beauty within society. As John Mason has said, "You were born an original. Don't die a copy" (Mason, 1993).
...y standards, further resulting in negative impacts on their self-esteem and confidence. Furthermore, this limited perspective of beauty causes women to be blinded and not realize that there is not one specific look of beautiful, but many. In a sense, women are taught to think that beautiful is being thin, having silky hair, toned legs, big breast, blemish and acne-free skin, and so on. However, in order to reach these beauty standards set by society, a woman can overwork her body in order to lose weight by dieting, or not eating to be “thin”, which also puts her health at risk and acts as an additional issue. Women who fail to reach these beauty standards set by society, may feel as though it is their fault and end up feeling even more insecure and bad about their body image, when in fact, the beauty standards were unrealistic and unattainable from the beginning.
Barbie, a doll manufactured by Mattel, Inc., encourages an unrealistic body image, racial insensitivity, and contradictive goals, and it is having a negative influence on young girls everywhere. Launched in March 1959 by Ruth Handler, an American business woman and president of Mattel, Inc., Barbie quickly became popular and has gone on to sell three dolls every second, in over one hundred and fifty countries. However, Barbie’s rise to success has not been wholly positive – there have been numerous controversies, parodies, and lawsuits, all addressing a number of issues. One such issue is how Barbie promotes an unrealistic and unobtainable body image. For example, to scale, Barbie is five feet, nine inches tall, has a thirty six inch chest, eighteen inch waist, and thirty three inch hips. Had Barbie been a real person, she would not be able to walk, much less hold her head up. Secondly, Barbie is racially insensitive and perpetuates stereotypes. “Mexico Barbie,” from Barbie’s “ethnic” line, comes with a passport and a Chihuahua, as well as stereotypical red lace ribbons in her hair. Lastly, Barbie portrays goals that are both unobtainable and contradictive. Barbie has had a variety of careers, such as being a doctor, astronaut, and President of the United States, but also engages in stereotypical domestic activities, such as cleaning and baking. These characteristics are affecting young girls in a time when they are most developmentally susceptible, and teaching them a number of negative lessons.