18 pages • 36 minutes read
Marge PiercyBarbie Doll
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1971A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Gender Roles and Societal Expectations
The poet speaks heavily on gender roles in “Barbie Doll'' from the very first line. “The girlchild was born as usual” (Line 1), Piercy writes, telling the reader that from birth, the child has been assigned the role of being a girl—the child is not only a child but is a girl. This discussion of the inescapability of gender roles expands further on in the poem, when the girlchild is “presented dolls that did pee-pee” (Line 2) and “miniature GE stoves and irons” (Line 3). The poet uses these objects as symbols of gender roles and societal expectations for girls and women, saying that these are the tools used, inadvertently or not, to teach girls what is expected of them because of their gender.
Along with the expectations for behavior and roles in life—mother, housekeeper, caretaker—come the expectations for appearance. The girlchild is presented “wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy” (Line 4), and as she enters “the magic of puberty” (Line 5), she is told she has “a great big nose and fat legs” (Line 6). These are things she is taught: She’s to wear makeup, she’s to have a small nose, she’s to have thin legs. She is taught that her body is wrong the way it is, much in the same way many women are taught.
The societal expectations discussed in the poem apply not only to the main character’s roles in life and her appearance, but to her day-to-day individual behaviors and personality as well. She is “advised to play coy / exhorted to come on hearty” (Lines 12-13), which are conflicting, unwinnable lines of “advice.” She is told to “exercise, diet, smile, and wheedle,” (Line 14) all of which focus on making her physically smaller, more performatively “happy” in order to please others, and more childlike, more flattering in using wheedling to coax others.
All of these gender roles and societal expectations placed on the main character pile on and ultimately lead to her demise. Often conflicting or unfeasible, Piercy uses these expectations to express how impossible it is to live up to them and how truly damaging they can be in real life.
Beauty Ideals and Objectification
The combination of doll and toy symbolism and discussions on gender roles that Piercy uses serve to scrutinize the objectification of women. Compared to a Barbie Doll in the title, the main character even receives a doll in the first stanza that looks like a person. She’s also presented with objects in miniature which mimic objects in real life: “miniature GE stoves and irons / and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy” (Lines 3-4). This creates a world of plastic objects of which she is a part, a human Barbie Doll among her tiny plastic domestic items. Piercy is telling the reader here that the girl is not only taught gender roles from very early in her life, but that she is objectified, turned into a “Barbie Doll” herself.
When the main character passes away, becoming lifeless, she is objectified once again in that sense. Even in death, she is presented as an object: “In the casket displayed on satin she lay.” (Line 19) Note here that she is not resting on satin or placed on satin, but is displayed, like an object would be in a store or on a shelf. She has been posthumously modified by the undertaker to match the appearance of a Barbie Doll, with “the undertaker’s cosmetics painted on” (Line 20) and “a turned-up putty nose” (21) in line with the eurocentric beauty standards that the Barbie Doll has been criticized for upholding, particularly by second-wave feminists like Piercy at this period of time. The girl even wears a “pink and white nightie” (Line 22), having been dressed up like a doll after her death.
Her “consummation at last” (Line 24) comes with “finally” having the appearance of the Barbie Doll of the title, of finally becoming an object which matches the beauty ideals placed on her. “To every woman a happy ending” (Line 25) mimics the fairy-tale endings that princesses and dolls and toys often have, but Piercy imbues it here with a dark irony.
Related Titles
By Marge Piercy
