Barbie Doll Marge Piercy

The deed of conveyance of this song immediately underscores its thematic concerns. Barbie is non just a toy for little misfires precisely has become a cultural figure of developed America. The doll is the archetype and symbol of the perfect American miss who has physiological appeal and wealth. She is the prime example of maidenly qualities and smash. Yet as we read on, Piercys description of the three-year-old girl is immensely different. She seems, un worry Barbie, to have a nifty big pry and plump out legs. The teen years girl, however, is entrapped by societys definitions of ravisher here exemplified by Barbie doll.By consistently severalise the ideal and the real, Piercy created a sin rime somewhat a girls suicide because of kindly pressures to be Barbie-beautiful. The substructure of the metrical composition is distinct Piercy is alluding to the impossible conditions of beauty in the modern world and how the need for such un describeable ideals can slip by to death. It also very much about subscribing to mixer beliefs of femininity, of what it is to be a charwoman, and not just about physical beauty.The dark and ominous atmosphere in the poesy is stigmatize by the descriptive elaborate of the meter and the consequent mood that is set by the t star. Piercy employs a matter-of-factly way to trace the details of a fat girl and her growing up years. Yet the survival of the fittest of images employed is unique and powerful for they adjure images of childhood. Dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and manacles and wee lipsticks the color of cherry sweeten evoke innocence in the playthings of childhood provided these images argon immediately contrasted with the girls big nose and fat legs. This occurs again in stanza both(prenominal) where the girl is described as a whole and intelligent girl al nearly complete of potential, abundant sexual drive and manual(a) dexterity. The positive physical image of this young pubescent girl is shattered at the end of the stanza for she needed to feel handsome about herself for having a fat nose on thick legs. Such a contrasting descriptive method is one of the ways that Piercy employs to underscore the raillery of the poem even more.The sardonic tactile property that Piercy uses is most blatant in the utmost two stanzas. Here, we see a girl who has been compelled to substantiate to false social beliefs of looking like a barbie doll. She needs to play coy, exercise, diet, grinning and wheedle. These argon archetypal images of femininity. Here, Piercy moves beyond a description of physical beauty but one of social expectations of femininity. The girl is compelled to detect social norms of what it is to be female both physically and socially.The opening stanza, with its images of dolls, stoves, and lipsticks also widen the same intentions of how from a young age the girl is compelled to buy into a social definition of what a female is. The poem becomes much darker and Piercys sardonic tone and scornful attitude towards such social belief becomes much stronger in the last stanza where she employs irony powerfully. The girl is described as having taken her own life for she cut down off her nose and her legs and offered them up. In the final stanza, she is described as looking beautiful dressed in a intercept and white nightie and having a turned-up put on nose. Here, the image is one of a barbie doll. The girl has been transformed into the image she could not attain in life and could only do so in death. This is a scary thought that Piercy is attempting to communicate to readers women die stressful to achieve impossible notions of beauty and perhaps the only way to do so is in death. Such a interpret is certainly accentuated by the final lines of the poem Consummation at last. To every woman a happy remnant. The happy resultant can seemingly only be found in death. The lines in this stanza are then charged with irony and the irony evokes a sense of sadness and shock. thither is no real happy ending for although she does finally for her quest for beauty and graven image is consummated she dies in the process. The poem therefore echoes with how society often compels women to subscribe to expectations of what is distaff like a Barbie doll. It also thereby reveals the very misplaced qualities that society holds with regards to women. Women are objectified as dolls and playthings.