Barbie Doll By Marge Piercy

Write an explication of the poem "Barbie Doll


The poem “Barbie Doll” from Marge Piercy is a short poem of 4 stanzas that reveal the stages of the girl child. The poem reveals theiconic figure of the Barbie doll that came out on 1959. Barbie represent a beauty figure in all America by the 1960’s to modern day. A blonde, blue eyes, skinny figure doll with a pink dress and pinkaccessories. A “perfect” doll.
In this poem the character is a girl suffering from societies conception of beauty. The girl is pointed out as chubby and fat (“You have a great big nose and fat legs”)by a classmate. This first stanza describes the victim’s appearance. The first three lines of the second stanza seems to be describing the Barbie’s appearance (“She was healthy, tested intelligent,possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity”) but as we get to the forth and fifth lines we realize it’s not the Barbie doll but the girl. She goes back and forwardapologizing for her appearance. Now after reading the second stanza we can understand that the poem is not referring to the Barbie doll, but to the girl that is healthy, intelligent, and strong, yeteveryone saw chubby and fat (just because a classmate commented on her appearance).
“She was advised to play coy and exhorted to come hearty”. The first two lines of this third stanza reveal acontradiction, to be shy and share affection. She exercised, dieted and persuaded. Her personality fated and she tried to become something that she wasn’t, a Barbie. “So she cut off her nose and her legs andoffered them up.” This previous line gives us a literal idea meaning she (the girl) cut of the body parts that made her ugly, but also brings upon a different concept, that she did her best to looseweight and changed what made her look chubby.
In the last stanza the girl is now dead in a casket, dead. The skin was grayish, wearing dark funeral make-up, exhibiting a pink and white...