Get ready… We have everything we need now... Are you all excited? Admiring my subjects, my slender fingers fidgeted in anticipation and the corners of my lips quivered in attempt to hold my smile. I’d finally found everything I needed and I considered the possibilities of what I could do next. In front of my raw, rug-burnt knees, everyone was meticulously sprawled out in a line on the floor with proper separation and position. Perfect. Everyone is ready, too. I rapidly snatched my first subject and yanked the limbs off of it—parts and hinges flying around the room before I shoved miscellaneous materials into the empty sockets. One done… Don’t worry, everyone… I’ll fix you too. While I began grasping the next subject, a shriek pierced my ears. “Emilee, what the HELL are you doing to my Barbies?! GRANDMA! COME UP HERE NOW!!” However, the panicked, shrill screams of my older old sister didn’t phase me. In fact, I didn’t even lift my eyes from my work—I’d promised them I’d make them stronger, after all. Better—with eyes like my friend with the glasses, legs like my teacher’s metal leg, and ears like my grandpa and his hearing aid. “Em, it was your time to come find me. Where did you go—” At this …show more content…
We contacted your mother, but her assistant said she’d be busy until later tonight. Your sister said something similar, also.” I rolled my eyes. I’ve always been on my own. Why stop now? I was irate, but although he had been strict and stern all day, the officer’s presence in the room was soothing that feeling. This was new to me—usually, I sat in my room, worked alone, and despised when others bothered/distracted me. However, right now, the officer was actually helping. How could another human help me feel better? I scoffed to myself and tried my hardest to control my body, figure out what I could do to fix me, and fathom why I felt that way I
“Well, Alice, my father said, if it had to happen to one of you, I’m glad it was you and not your sister” (57). Even though Alice was the victim of the horrid crime, she had to stabilize her own emotions, so that she could help her sister cope with this tragedy. Throughout Alice’s childhood, Jane struggled with alcoholism and panic attacks. “I wished my mother were normal, like other moms, smiling and caring, seemingly, only for her family” (37).
“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
This book is about a slave with a half-white mother and a white father. He was born in North Carolina and missed death in the first few days of his life. His mother’s mistress wanted to kill him because he was the son of his mother’s slave master. She went to his mother’s room at night with a knife but his Grandmother saved his life. Not to long after that he and his mother were sold.
Millions of girls around the world are dressing their Barbie dolls in skimpy designer outfits and high heel shoes, and slide her slender legs into a bright pink convertible next to her male counterpart, Ken. These same girls will gaze into the mirror, staring at their thighs and hair, and attempt to balance themselves in a pair of their mother’s high heel shoes. They will wonder why they do not look like Barbie. They will wonder today, just as I wondered years ago. As the years of make-believe with the American plastic icon of girlhood nostalgia passed, I discovered Barbie’s hidden effects. Although Barbie lent herself to fond memories of childhood, she also influenced my early ideal image of the female body. As I began to realize Barbie’s false representation of a real woman, I dis...
Since Barbie’s debut in 1959 she has been influencing young girls and swaying their perceptions of beauty when in reality her body, measuring 39-18-33 (bust, waist, hips) is unable to bear a child, she would be incapable of holding up her own back and neck and she is so disproportioned she would need to crawl on all fours (Slayen). Despite popular belief, maybe it is beginning to seem as if Barbie is not so perfect after all. However that has not stopped young girls from admiring their Barbie Dolls perfection, and in ...
So, we had to approve the apartment and tell her what we wanted fixed. At
Aunt Jennifer and the girl both lack control of their own lives. Aunt Jennifer lives under the restraints of her husband, and the main character in “Barbie Doll” lives under the restraints of society’s expectations. The reader can first see this as Aunt Jennifer is doing her needle work: “The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band / Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand” (7-8). From this the reader can gather that Aunt Jennifer is being held back by her husband in one way or another. The reader knows that the “girlchild” (1) in “Barbie Doll” is powerless because society completely disproves of her appearance, making her feel inferior. The tigers Aunt Jennifer is creating are described as “proud and unafraid” (12), which is the exact opposite of Aunt Jennifer. This woman is clearly unhappy and living vicariously through her creations. She perhaps does not feel she has the sanction to change anything in her life so as to make it more enjoyab...
Can a person get so subconsciously desperate that he/she, unknowingly, creates an imaginary figure to rescue them? While that may seem like an insane notion to ponder, it is all too real for Connie, a fifteen year old girl in “Where are you going, Where have you been?” by Joyce Oates. There are three separate writers whose interpretations of Oates’ story prove that the answer to that question, in Connie’s case is yes. Arnold Friend is a figment of Connie’s imagination created by her desperate need for a reality check.
Reflecting off the “cause and effect” poem “Barbie’s little Sister” by Ellie Schoenfeld, it is difficult dealing with the pressures of the outside world, especially these days.
People look at you like you’re the one to blame. They see your tattered sneakers and tangled, greasy hair, and they think they know you. But how could they? You amble down the sidewalk, keep your head down, your eyes averted. You don’t want any trouble. People are quick to assume that's what you're looking for. Your lips are chapped and your face is dirty. You cannot remember the last time you brushed your teeth, let alone took a shower. The thought makes you laugh almost as much as the thought of your old bedroom walls, the shadows cast by the ceiling fan as you stared up from your bed. You had to leave home. It was taken from you. The adults in your life shifted as you grew older, or perhaps you just grew aware. They took pills or tipped glasses or screamed at you for no particular reason. They kicked you out when you got pregnant, when you got mouthy, when you weren't all they wanted you to be. They got sadistic. They crossed unspeakable lines. You had to leave home. You are barely more than a child. At least, you were before. Now, you are homeless.
I muttered those words at a volume that could only be heard by my own ears. The waiting room was torture, and the waiting was even more torturous. Two fake, and very plastic looking plants sat in the corner, shining abnormally in the harsh lighting. My palms were sweaty from anxiety and the unbearable heat that seemed to encase the room. My mom sat at the couch opposite of me, her reading glasses illuminated from the glow of her cell phone. Music played softly from the empty front desk that sat behind a wooden baby gate. It wasn’t that I expected a therapist’s waiting room to look like. I expected obnoxiously cheerful posters telling me to keep on living and to be healthy. I arrived in that room with an attitude that could put what I felt boiling over inside me to shame.
As I walked out of the courthouse and down the ramp, I looked at my mom in disappointment and embarrassment. Never wanting to return to that dreadful place, I slowly drug my feet back to the car. I wanted to curl up in a little ball and I didn't want anyone else to know what I had done. Gaining my composure, I finally got into the car. I didn't even want to hear what my mom had to say. My face was beat red and I was trying to hide my face in the palms of my hands because I knew what was about to come; she was going to start asking me questions, all of the questions I had been asking myself. Sure enough, after a short period of being in the car, the questions began.
When She painted the doll, She was meticulous in her work and did it swiftly without a smudge. That was the only doll She took with her, She taught the doll to be like her. The doll would be her when ready. Then, She found another doll much prettier and kinder than the last. The new doll was a boy, who was tall and extremely new. The old doll was cast aside and remembered from time to time, but She was not cared for, or polished, or loved, or even repaired. The new doll was, though. The old doll got a chip, on her leg. That spread into a crack down her spine. Then transformed her into an old ugly hag of a doll. After years of mal maintenance, the old doll was so disfigured that it began to crumble. The doll that She cared for so much crumbed from the head toppled onto the ground and shattered. She ran over to see what happened, her old doll she remembered had crashed, just like the others. Oh, maybe she should have cared for the doll, repaired the doll, polished the doll or loved the doll. But she didn’t, She tossed it away like an old flame, a blast from the past that no one remembered but would relive in their mind, a fractured visage that everyone winced upon a look.
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.
The stress of my day drained away the moment I heard my sister’s laughter. Every other noise would vibrate in the eardrum and make me feel like I was about to topple over. I reached out for her, the warm, small palms fitting entirely in mine. When she flashes an innocent smile in my direction, I cannot not help but feel grateful I have her around. Although she does not understand it, I attribute my determination to succeed to her.