Barbie Doll and Literary Analysis

        Barbie Dolls are the toys of the little girl.  White beauty and skinniness.  What everyone wants to be.  Smiling and content, with a nice-looking boyfriend.  Muscular, strong.  Flawless.  Ken.  But this is not the real world.  It is pretend.

        In Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy, readers learn that societal pressure can cause people to alter their true identity, in favor of one that is more accepted.  We see this theme in the poem initially in the title, Barbie Doll, which exemplifies the norms of beauty for women -- this is generally being white and skinny.  We see a girl who played with dolls as a young girl, seeing their utopian qualities of beauty.  She hits the "magic of puberty," stated in a metaphor in the poem, and her body is changed, much like magic does.  She becomes more developed, and is called out for having "a great big nose and fat legs."  A girl who is intelligent and healthy, with good skills, is forced to apologize for herself.  For not fitting conventional beauty.  Just like with Rachel in the Girl Who Fell from the Sky, the girl's beauty is a single story: her body, and is objectified.  Advised by society to flirt -- play coy and wheedle -- and get skinny, the girl eventually has to take off her mask.  Her blue bottle of criticisms breaks.  She cuts her fatness, who she is to conform to societal norms.  The girl changes who she is.  But, as the poem ironically says, now, the girl is pretty.