Feminism In Marge Piercy's Barbie Doll

Feminism has yet again become a prominent topic in recent years and the issue is ripe with controversy due to the tendency of sexism to be more subtle now than it was in the past, such as back during the Women’s Suffrage Movement. While, superficially, Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” seems an antiquated, obsolete analysis of insignificant stereotypes that are no longer relevant in modern society, this isn’t the case as one looks deeper. Marge Piercy paints an exceptionally bold, audacious, and, at times, almost grotesque picture of 1973 sexual stereotypes which decidedly still holds true over 40 years later. “Barbie Doll” candidly addresses both the devaluation of women into only having worth within the female stereotype and the shameless sexualization

“Lipsticks the color of cherry candy” (4) suggests quite a lot. “Cherry candy” obviously represents an extremely bright red color. Red lipstick has an intense connotation of being associated with sexy and sexually promiscuous women. Because red is such a sexualized color, the line really calls back to the idea of being both a young, innocent child and a girl, inescapably female. Further, the “cherry” part has quite a lot of significance as well, if not more than the color. Cherry is often used as a sort of slang term for the hymen where “popping your cherry” means to lose one’s virginity (What Does Pop). It could be that the cherry colored lipstick is encouraging the “girlchild”’s sexuality or perhaps referring to the value of holding on to her “cherry,” or, in other words, her virginity. In the last stanza of the poem the “girlchild” is “displayed on satin” (19) in her casket and “dressed in a pink and white nightie” (22). Satin is reminiscent of luxurious satin sheets on a bed or even of the material of a slinky, sexy pink and white nightie. While a nightie is a rather obvious sexualization, the colors are significant as well. Pink is often associated with women, especially young girls. It has a certain

Walking into almost any store that sells toys shows quite clearly that there is a difference between toys for girls and boys. While some stores, such as Target, have attempted to at least partially address the issue by trying to remove labels such as “girl” and “boy” from their toy sections, it was met with a significant amount of backlash from the public showing just how much farther we still have to go on such issues (Luckerson). Furthermore, despite such attempts to move forward, girls are still actively encouraged to maintain the housewife stereotype through toys such as the It’s Girl Stuff! Cleaning Set containing a toy dust pan and brush, broom, and cleaning spray that was manufactured and sold as recently as 2014 (A Cleaning Set). Even worse, the sexualization of and enforcement of beauty standards for females as a whole, and especially for young girls, has arguably become more rampant in recent years. Makeup, skincare, and weight loss companies have been targeting girls through marketing at progressively younger ages (Cardona). Teen magazines further enforce the unrealistically high beauty standards for women with articles such as one that presents Hollywood celebrities Reese Witherspoon, Cameron Diaz, Salma Hayek, and Heather Graham as “role models against which readers can calibrate their own behavior” (Gibbons). Only