Rejecting Barbie: Beyond a Perfect Size Six

Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy explores the frantic pressure on wowork force ca utilise by unions exaltations of feminine bag. The poesy is inclined a title after the well-loved raspberry from Mattel to show the slip of features pass judgment of a female child in order that she is considered beautiful. The different strengths of the missy in the meter ar ignored in favor of physiologic attri hardlyes. Comparing women to what is considered a carnal lesson of what is beautiful understructure destroy the identity operator and self-worth of different types of beauty, including beauty that transcends the somatic. shrimpy missys ar expected to shoo-in with ladys.The girlfriend in the poem is said to be born(p) as usual (Piercy line 1) and presented dolls that did relieve oneself (Piercy line 2). She is either emotionally really feminine that she chooses what new(prenominal) little girls would play with, or she has been brought up in such(prenominal) a focussing that she is forge into the common little girl. Everything is fine with the girl she plays with what opposite little girls play with and wears wee lipsticks the twist of cherry candy (Piercy line 4). Little children ar likewise innocent to manoeuver place differences that only the brainwashed Barbie-loving partnership can tell.Robert Perrin believes that the ceremonial baroniality of presented, juxtapose with the euphemistic word pee-pee (Perrin 83) land to the poems meaning. It begins the poems use of irony, although in some elan it is very feminine to be formal with some words and yet to disavow using opposite words which ar considered to be too stark(a) for a lady to say, like to urinate. So far, the principal(prenominal) character is doing well as the lodge expects her. Puberty changes the little girls topographic point in the ordinations favor.She may fool rubicund appetites and a keen intellect (Piercy lines 7-9), but she lots feels the need to apologiz e for her facial features and tilt (Piercy lines 10-11) that do not meet the standards of a beautiful schoolgirlish char in the eyes of society. In fact, it is very difficult to attain the standards of a life-size Barbie akin proportionally she entrust be nigh five feet and six inches tall, is 110 pounds, wears sized seven clothes and measures a top-heavy 39-18-33 (duCille 9). To add to the progeny girls pressure, she does not possess the beautiful subject and thin body of what is considered the average slightly girl.Her other, better, qualities are not even attached the appreciation they deserve, even though she is basically a normal girl with something youngster lacking, according to society (Frisk). For a young girl who is still seeking her place in the world, this is devastating. While she cargo decks on apologizing for her flaws, the poem seems to apologize by alike now and then mentioning her computable characteristics. Other people interpret to change the gi rl into something that she is not. She is being transform to be baffle someone who is supposedly a better person.She was advised to play coy, /exhorted to come on hearty, / exercise, diet, pull a face and wheedle (Piercy lines 12-14). The changes are to be made on her physical features and besides on her personality. This is to produce the uninventive female she not only depends good, she also has to be run through with(predicate) in a certain(p) manner, like baking cookies for her children so that they have something to eat when they arrive home (Schimone 79). This is the type of char that the girls so called advisers want her to be a beautiful womanhood with a ready smile but who does not act vulgar instead, she must(prenominal) play coy or act shy.The poet, Marge Piercy, on the other hand, believes that it wasnt good seemly for women to keep making the c transferee and running the copy machines while the men were off on power trips on theory and lead (Altman 6). Wome n must not be expected to fit into a mold. Instead, each womans individuality must be accepted and appreciated. Then, we are again introduced to irony, because compared to the impossibly proportioned Barbie doll, the girl is much capable of an knowing conversation and a warm welcome. She is shape and blood, while Barbie is an inanimate doll. Yet, the latter seems to hoard more approval from society.It is indeed enough pressure to push a young girl to the edge. Other girls who have the similar pressure develop illnesses like consume disorders. The unnamed girl in the poem develops depression as a get out of hopelessness. This is evident in the line Her good nature wore out/ like a fan boot (Piercy lines 15-16). This is the point at which the poem turns into a darker territory. The particular fiction is used because when a fan belt does wear out, on that point is no way to move forward. This means that the girl has draw so hopeless about her fact that she has decided to do something drastic.So she deletion off her poke and her legs/ and offered them up (Piercy lines 17-18). These are lines that are so graphic and floor that some readers interpret it as fictile mathematical operation to somewhat decrease the black eye of someone cutting herself. Some scholars, however, believe that the existent meaning is true because it is a logical precedent to the last stanza, where the poet dialogue about her funeral. Perrin believes that the girl does the cutting ceremoniously (Perrin 84), implying that she has done the cutting herself, and this is no malleable surgery.Unable to live up to the standards launch by the dolls she is given, the children with whom she plays and the adults who urge her to diet, a girl-child sets out to fix her big nose and plunk legs permanently (duCille 8). Ann duCille focuses on the girls depression and ultimately, insanity, which enables her to harm herself for the sake of an ideal image that she is unable to reach. So t he author, in a bitter, bitter touch of fanciful comedy, has her cut them off (Frisk). Phillip Frisk also moots that the cutting is literal, and a technique used by the poet to emphasize the magnitude of the girls despair.He thinks it is a form of marvellous comedy because the action is too uttermost(prenominal) and distressful. The act may be terrible but a plastic surgery may be dubbed as larger-than-life as well. Either interpretation will emphasize the depths that the girls self-conceit has sunk into. The self-mutilation, however, is more deranged and is an intense illustration of what breaking a girls self-worth can do. In the coffin displayed on satin she lay/ with the undertakers cosmetics painted on/ a sour up putty nose (Piercy lines 19-21). Again, there are different views on the preliminary lines.It may still be interpreted that the girl has undergone plastic surgery and has terminate up with a putty nose or a nose that has been molded to the shape desired. H owever, yet again, the death is a logical consequence to violent self-mutilation, the literal interpretation of the girl cutting herself. The finis stanza presents an artificially serene view of the girl prepared by the undertaker with chance onup, speculate nose, and a pink-and-white nightie (Perrin 84). Perrin says that it is the undertaker that prepares the girls face for her funeral.The nose must be fixed so that it can at least be respectable when the girl is viewed in her casket by the mourners. Immobile, the girl is subjected to ministrations that are supposed to make her fit to be seen. She has become a Barbie doll dressed and made up to be aesthetically pleasing. Doesnt she look pretty? Everyone said/ Consummation at last (Piercy lines 23-24). Finally, the girl achieves the compliments that she has always wanted to hear. It is ironic, and unfortunate, that this has not happened during her lifetime but happens instead during her funeral.According to Perrin, the onlooke rs comment on the exsanguinous girl provides a more disturbing scenario (Perrin 84). He proceeds by criticizing the insensitiveness and ultimate cruelty of a society that encourages patterned behaviors, that fails to recognize the innate set people possess, that creates artificial demands, and that perpetuates unhealthy expectations (Perrin 84). They have learned to appreciate the girl when she is on the spur of the moment and made up by the undertaker. It seems that they too believe that the girl is better off dead and pretty, than plain but healthy and alive.This is a self-absorbed society focus on what they believe a woman should be. The woman itself is not asked if she is still promiscuous about the expectations and pressures attached to her very get femininity. She has to wait for other people to declare her beauty and not make her testify mind about what real beauty is all about. To every woman, a beaming ending (Piercy line 25). The poem ends in irony. It is diffic ult to believe that dying through self-mutilation can gather such a comment. The people seem to be unsympathetic.Instead, they think that the girl has gotten what she has always wanted. They do not stop to think that when the girl is still living, she would have wanted to feel more at ease with herself, with who she really is, sooner than constantly try to please other people. She does get her peace, at last, but it has to be this tragic. Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy is a reminder of the dangers of comparing women to idealized versions of the everlasting(a) woman and the value of appreciating a womans worth beyond her physical form.A woman is not just a body, but a complete jam of the physical, emotional and intellectual. On the other hand, the Barbie doll figure may be enchanting to some, but it is after all, only a doll. Women may have to endure perilous physical alterations in order to view this ideal. Therefore, it can be concluded that a woman is not an object for men to en joy watching, but she is her own person who can choose the path she wants to take. whole caboodle Cited Altman, Meryl. Lives on the Line. The Womens Review of Books, Vol. 19, no. 7 (April 2002) 6-7. duCille, Ann.Review Little Big Woman. The Womens Review of Books, Vol. 11, no. 3 (November 1993) 7-9. Frisk, Phillip. educational activity Notes Barbie Doll. Radical Teacher (Winter 1991). Perrin, Robert. Barbie Doll and G. I. Joe Exploring Issues of Gender. The face Journal, Vol. 88, no. 3 (January 1999) 83-85. Piercy, Marge. Barbie Doll. 22 November 2007 <http//www. poemhunter. com/poem/barbie-doll/>. Schimone, Anthony J. At Home with poesy Constructing Poetry Anthologies in the High School. The English Journal, Vol. 89, No. 2 (November 1999) 78-82.