Entry #1
Quote: “I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me, Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs- all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink skinned doll was what every girl treasured.” (Chapter 1, page 20)
The quote above stood out to me, even though I am still in the youngest stage of the novel, due to the impact I felt it had on the theme and message of the novel as a whole. Even though I still am relatively unfamiliar with the main character, Pecola Breedlove, at this point of the novel, the message Claudia is sending in the quote demonstrates foreshadowing
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The “blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink skinned” figure of endearment seemed to scare her and even evoke hatred within herself. Claudia, as explained in the quote above, tries so desperately to discover what makes everyone else swoon for these dolls, when she cannot even shed a single drop of love for the doll. In this stage of the novel, Claudia is very young, approximately nine-years-old. Understanding this, it allows me to understand the sensitive and inquisitive nature of the character, as well as how much this one curiosity she has will continue to influence her for the remainder of her life. I believe Morrison incorporated this to introduce the theme of beauty obsession and how even this harmless doll’s physical features can invoke admiration in all of those that encounter her. Even though Claudia’s mentality has not reached maturation, she still registers that everyone around her has basically defined the American standard of beauty for her, due to their constant raving about the doll, but for her the question is why they are the universal beauty standard. She even tries to tear the doll apart and find something attractive on the inside, but even after demolishing it, she is still left disappointed because she has yet to discover the secret to the doll’s
She said "Ugly characters in kids’ books are generally horrible and their physical flaws are signs of other shortcomings. Villains have bad teeth, liars have long noses, zombies have thick skulls. The miserly are bony, the greedy, fat." We should fix that because not always the ugly is the evil and the beautiful are the heroes. And we can realize that when we look to the magaziens and sales; they usually used use an attractive people as models to make you look at their products. She also got a little nervous from her girl, because she refused to play with Eleanor Roosevelt doll, and on the other hand, she slept with her beautiful Barbie doll. But for me, we can't blame the little girl, because the girl judged the doll from its appearance. And that's the same thing that happens with the creator of the novel. When Safie, Agatha, and Felix return from their walk while the creature shows up to the old man, they hit him with cries of fear and panic because of the creature looks. And as we read, we going to see how the old man accepted the creature from his hear, and this one of the advantges of being blind, because if you are blind, you not going to be tricked with people's
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.
She uses third person diction to construct an image of what the male and female consider regarding a situation that is not declared. Just like every other girl, it is implied that the daughter in the situation wishes to conform to society by having a Barbie Doll. An ironic situation arises as a result because the father doesn’t want his daughter to be influenced by the doll. He is concerned with how she may perceive beauty as a consequence of it. He states, “It's not just the pointy plastic tits, it's the wardrobes. The wardrobes and that stupid male doll, what's his name, the one with the underwear glued on?” (Atwood 491). The situation is ironic because throughout this vignette, women are characterized as being “fake” or “plastic”. Although the father’s concerns are valid, he doesn’t realize that his daughter would otherwise spend the rest of her time wishing to have the doll. Eventually, she would become just like that doll. Atwood summarizes this by saying “repression breeds sublimation.” (Atwood 491)
Tod Clifton's dancing Sambo dolls are the most striking example of doll imagery. This small tissue paper doll has the capability to completely change the Invisible Man. When he sees that the powerful and enigmatic Clifton is the one hawking the abominable dolls, the narrator is so filled with humiliation and rage that he spits upon the dancing figure. But what is it that has caused this surging of fury? It is Tod Clifton and not the narrator who has degraded himself to such a base level. However, it is our narrator's sudden comprehension of his own situation that causes his wrath. The line "For a second our eyes met and he gave me a contemptuous smile" (433) illustrates this moment of realization for our narrator. It shows the reader that Tod Clifton was aware of his position as a puppet all along and chooses to enlighten the narrator at this particular point in the novel.
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.
“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 girls feel that people need to mask their imperfections and true selves to uphold the image of how they are supposed to be. These dolls were found in a less than desirable place, such as “Lying on the street next to some tool bits ,and platform shoes with the heels all squashed, and a florescent green wicker wastebasket, and aluminum foil, and hubcaps, and a pink shag rug, and windshield wiper blades, and dusty mason jars, and a coffee can full of rusty nails”. They find another Barbie with heals in the depths of junk. They cover up the physical flaws of the burnt barbies with pretty outfits such as the “Prom Pinks” dress. One of the girls state “as long as you don't lift her dress, right? - who’s to know.” This attempt to cover up where the dolls came from and their imperfections seem to parallel their feelings about themselves and where they come from. The girls have an image of how their dolls would be if they were new. This could be the role society plays on the image of how women are supposed to be and look
He so badly wanted to buy her a gift in hopes of winning her over, that he can’t even concentrate in school. He explains that “her image came between me and the page I strove to read,” and he even stood watching her house for an hour “seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure” that was derived by his own imagination (Joyce 63-64). After his uncle comes home later than intended, the young boy unfortunately arrived too late to buy a gift for the girl at the bazaar. “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger,” this quote shows how he is unhappy with the infatuated thoughts that took over him for many days (Joyce
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on A Doll’s House”. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. SparkNotes.com. 20 Mar 2011. http://Sparknotes.com/lit/dollhouse/themes.html.
In the 1940's as well as present day, the media pushed on society an image of perfection and beauty. This image is many times fake, but the naive cannot deceive, and it can become an icon of beauty. If you do not fall within the image then you are ugly. In the book "The Bluest Eye," we witness the power that the media has on specific characters: Pecola Breedlove, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer. The icon of beauty at that point in time is Shirley Temple, a white girl with blond hair and blue eyes. She is also the first reference to beauty in the book. Claudia explains her feelings towards Shirley Temple by saying, "...I had felt a stranger, more frightening thing than hatred for all the Shirley Temples of the world" (19). Claudia is relating the hatred that she felt towards Shirley Temple to the envy she has towards girls who are beautiful like Shirley. Claudia herself knows that the media is trying to imply this image she says, "Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signsall the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured" (20). This idea is repeated repetitively throughout the story, the idea that blue-eyed is beautiful. Frieda and Pecola love Shirley Temple while Claudia despises her with envy. Pecola once goes to purchase some candies called Mary Janes, she is very intrigued by the blue-eyed, blond girl in the wrapper. The narrator tells us that Pecola feels Mary Jane's eyes are pretty and that by eating the candy she feels the love that she has for the girl on the wrapper and she finds herself closer to her (50). The idea pushed by the media that blue eyes are beautiful builds up a strong destructive desire in Pecola.
Scott, Clement. "Review of 'A Doll's House." The Theatre 14.79 (July 1889): 19-22. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Paula Kepos. Vol. 37. Detroit: Gale Research, 1991. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Mar. 2011.
“The Youngest Doll” by Rosario Ferre is ultimately about an aunt who constantly creates life-sized dolls for her three nieces. It becomes more of an obsession rather than hobby when the author explains that each year the aunt spends more time and effort into making these dolls resemble her nieces as much as possible. Towards the end of the story the youngest niece ends up marrying a doctor. The doctor who she ends up marrying views her more as an object to flaunt rather than respecting her worth. Many of the critics who analyze the story come across the idea that Rosario Ferre is attempting to make it appointed that during this time period there was a mixture of sexism, racism, gender, and class implications. As I agree with all of these statements,
In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the character Claudia struggles with a beauty standard that harms her sense of self-esteem. Claudia tries to make sense of why the beauty standard does not include black girls. The beauty standard determines that blonde-haired blue-eyed white girls are the image of beauty and therefore they are worthy of not only attention, but are considered valuable to American culture of the 1940s. Thus, learning she has no value or beauty as a black girl, Claudia destroys her white doll in an attempt to understand why white girls are beautiful and subsequently worthy, socially superior members of society. In destroying the doll, Claudia attempts to destroy the beauty standard that works to make her feel socially inferior and ugly because of her skin color. Consequently, Claudia's destruction of the doll works to show how the beauty standard was created to keep black females from feeling valuable by producing a sense of self-hate in black females. The racial loathing created within black women keeps them as passive objects and, ultimately, leads black women, specifically Pecola, to destroy themselves because they cannot attain the blue eyes of the white beauty standard.
Stone, Tanya Lee. The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact on Us. New York: Penguin Group, 2010. Print.