Barbie: The Plastic Insecurity
In Marge Piercy’s Barbie Doll, the author tries to bring awareness to an issue because of the overwhelming social pressures and insecurities, one girl has that causes her to commit suicide. The classic Barbie doll came out in 1959 and this poem was published in 1971 giving only 12 years for the Barbie doll to be out on the market and have an impact on little girls. In Piercy’s poem, as the girlchild is growing up, she is given all the toys girls today get, toy dolls, GE stoves, irons, and lipsticks (Piercy). All the things she will need to be “successful” as a woman. The girl is smart, intelligent and beautiful but one day, when the girl is a teenager, “a classmate said: you have a great big nose and fat legs”
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Today the Barbie doll is still a popular toy but the Ken doll is just as popular. Thus, resulting in societies idea of the perfect bodies for males and females. Plastic. People are supposed to be plastic and only look a certain way no matter how they feel or how they choose to look. If a transgendered male (female to male) has a female body and is happy with his body but society tells him he is female based on the genitalia he has have, he will spend thousands of dollars to get gender reassignment surgery just so society will view him as a male. Any type of surgery is expensive and transgendered people aren’t the only people who get it. In the article “Teenage girls and plastic surgery” it states the pros and cons of teenage girls getting plastic surgery but the truest statement in the article “Many teenage girls want plastic surgery for all the wrong reasons” (Teenage) The teenagers “…may feel pressure to live up to the unrealistic standard of female beauty promoted by U.S. popular culture. But they “… also do not carefully consider the health risks that plastic surgery poses.” (Teenage) This may seem like girls are the only ones who feel the pressure of societies opinion and “Observers say that teenage girls are far more likely than boys to feel physically inadequate” (Teenage) But the truth is that “Young men with body image issues are …show more content…
The United States in the most obese country and the Barbie doll was manufactured in the United States. The negative part of this is that “In 2013, 42 million children under the age of 5 worldwide were overweight or obese” (Kiener). Children are playing with a doll that is tone and has the perfect body when they don’t have the same body type. They are being taught how they should look when they don’t look that way they hate themselves. So many people think Barbie isn’t to blame when in fact I wouldn’t be writing this essay if I didn’t think Barbie was causing a problem with self-esteem issues nor would “a 2006 study published in the journal Developmental Psychology, [have] found that girls exposed to Barbie at a young age expressed greater concern with being thin, compared with those exposed to other dolls” (Dockterman) have their
Looking in a mirror only reflect a person outside and do not capture the beauty that lies within. Some people will look at the mirror and see all the things that needs to be change about themselves. Having this idea to be perfect is a never ending fairy tale. In the poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, a young girl feels by changing her looks she can be accepted by others. Piercy demonstrate the importance of body image can have on the young and travel through adult hood.
The poem, “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy references socialization. The poem is concerned with a woman rather than a culture. Her physical appearance affects how people view her and how she sees herself. This builds social context. The “Barbie Doll” poem is an effective poem.
Dissatisfaction amongst today’s youth regarding their personal body image is increasingly common, warranting a necessary change in the norms and behaviours that are portrayed to Canadian youth. The necessary change that must be implemented moving forward is the portrayal of healthy and attainable body images through media. A 2012 ABC News article stated the average model weighs 23% less than the average woman (Lovett, 2012). Such an appalling statistic is something that must be tackled as we progress toward the future seeing as it showcases to the youth of today that anorexia and unhealthy body weight is seen as desirable or attractive. The relation between such a statistic and anorexia is clear.
The freedom of being able to change Barbie’s clothes into her various wardrobes sold gives the young children playing with her the sense of individuality. Although Barbie has brought a lot of controversy to the table within the years it has been on the shelf, her portrayal has not changed because after all she is just a doll,
The poem "Barbie Doll" by Marge Piercy has a profound meaning to it. After reading it a couple of times, I found the theme by analyzing multiple things. I figured out the theme because of the author's use of figurative language and the outcome of her plot. The theme that I discovered was; people change people for the better or for, the worse, but it is upon them how they take it in.
The poem Barbie doll by Marge Piercy is about a little girl who grows up only to kill herself for not living up to society’s standards. The speaker shows how she had a normal childhood and was happy playing with here baby dolls and toy stove. However, during puberty, her body changed and everyone noticed. She was criticized for her “fat nose and thick legs”. She tried to change by dieting and exercising, but soon tired of doing so.
The poem Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy is a short poem that talks about a little girl who is born just like any other little girl. She plays with dolls and little ovens and messes around with makeup. She is fine and unbothered with her life till she hits puberty. Around that age she has a classmate tell her “you have a big nose and fat legs.” She was a girl who was healthy, strong, and intelligent but, she was apologizing to everyone for what they saw.
With the constant fear of ridicule and discrimination, we still try and define ourselves, though we are always under the society’s scope. Marge Piercy, in her poem “Barbie Doll”, gives us a look at the influence of our surroundings and how something as innocent as a doll can trigger these insecurities. Our strive for acceptance and “perfection” can cause major emotional damage on anyone who identifies as a woman. Young girls look at these depictions of “perfect” bodies, such as a barbie doll for example, and compare themselves. In the poem “Barbie Doll”, Piercy talks about a young girl who she described as “...healthy, tested and intelligent...” (247) but, she was picked on by peers who said she had “a great big nose and fat legs.”
Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” takes a sarcastic approach to backlash at society and send the reader a message about what beauty really is. In “Barbie Doll”, A Barbie doll is used to show and symbolize what society views as what a female should aspire to become “perfect”. “Barbie's unrealistic body type…busty with a tiny waist, thin thighs and long legs…is reflective of our culture's feminine ideal. Yet less than two percent of American women can ever hope to achieve such dreamy measurements.”
As the saying goes, “Times have surely changed”. What was once labeled as sinful and unacceptable is now labeled as brave and expressive. Gender reassignment is a surgical procedure (or procedures) by which a transgender person's physical appearance and function of their existing sexual characteristics are altered to resemble that of their identified sex. What people fail to understand is that gender reassignment procedure has long been around. However, the recent gender reassignment for former athlete Bruce Jenner has caused an uproar among society.
Although Barbie has conveyed many beliefs through the clothes and jobs she has had, the most controversial belief has been body image. Since first being brought out into the world, Barbie has had an unreasonably shaped body, with a small waist and large breasts. All of Barbie’s body features have impacted the way society expects women to look. But in 2016, Barbie had a dramatic makeover, she was released in different heights and body shapes, making her more suitable to the way women actually look. Barbie’s new look has made a positive impact on young girls and potentially society’s unrealistic expectations of
Many authors write poems to express different types of feeling such as happiness, sadness, or judgment. In these poems the authors talk about being judge, and criticize and how they dealt with their struggles. Many people cope differently as we will see in, “Barbie Doll”, “David Talamantez on the Las Day of Second Grade” and the “Suicide Note”. In the poem “Suicide Note” by Janice Mirikitani, reveals her disappointment of her inability to rise to her parents standards, which becomes too much for her and she takes away her life.
Marge Piercy's poem Barbie Doll tells of a young girl and her experience through adolescence. It illuminates the destruction wreaked when unrealistic expectations and gender limitations become socially acceptable. This poem ends with the tragic suicide of the girl and how only in death did she embody the ideals set by society. Piercy exposes the paradoxical expectations set by American culture through the use of explicit diction, simile, and irony.
But where did it all start and how did you get to this position? You’re five years old when you receive your first Barbie doll. Your innocent mind looks at the plastic figure as just a symbol of inspiration or a relatable toy used on the playground
The term “transgender” is a label that was never used until the mid 1960s. According to history, “Psychiatrist John F. Oliven of Columbia University coined the term transgender in his 1965 reference work Sexual Hygiene and Pathology (“Transgender”)”. When a transgender person desires to be the opposite gender, they may get an invasive surgery to fully transition into their new identity. Multiple transgender people have started to announce the having of the surgery has destroyed their future (Bindel). People have the right to be whatever gender they aspire to be, but transgender people should do public activities and should stay grouped with their biologically assigned sex.