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Barbie Doll Essay

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Beauty The poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy’ is about a girl who as a little girl was bullied because the girl is not beautiful. After she grew up, the girl cut her nose and legs to become beautiful and died from cutting parts of her body, but she is called beautiful at her funeral. In the poem, Piercy uses imagery, irony, and symbolism to convey the theme of societal expectations and gender roles. In the poem, Piercy uses imagery to describe the girl and how she looks. An example is, “She was healthy, tested intelligent, /possessed strong arms and back, /abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity” (lines 7-9). The use of imagery is used to describe how the girl looks, so in that way, we can picture her in our heads as normal teenager.

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