Barbie Doll (Themes)

Themes

Obedience

“Barbie Doll” symbolically describes the inherently destructive nature of patriarchy. A system of social organization in which male prerogative is the ruling principle, patriarchy demands women’s obedience to men. Historically, this obedience has been externally manifest through law; for example, until the twentieth century women had been denied voting privileges in the United States. But patriarchy also exhibits its power through the shaping of mind and self-image. A “good” woman is one who conforms to patriarchal expectations: she is feminine, domestic, pretty, and accommodating. When you are not these things, as the girlchild in Piercy’s poem is not, you will be punished. Society will shun you, you will be judged a freak, and your own strengths (e.g., the girlchild’s physical strength and intelligence) will appear to you as shortcomings because you will not be recognized for them. Piercy’s poem presents a girl of many talents who is worn down by an image of herself created by others which she could not, literally, live up to. In an act of “self” sacrifice, she cut off her nose and legs, those parts of her which did not conform to how a “beautiful” woman should look. This act of mutilation echoes the mutilation other women endure in tyrannically patriarchal societies. In parts of lower equatorial Africa, for example, young girls are forced to have “clitorectomies,” procedures which medically remove the clitoris. This deprives the woman of sexual pleasure, and is a constant reminder that her only value is as a child-bearing machine for the man who will own her. In the West, eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia are consequences women suffer in attempting to conform to the ideal of the Barbie body. In “Barbie Doll” the girlchild fulfills the patriarchal prescription for obedience by destroying herself.

She perpetuates patriarchal power in death by being transformed into someone she could not be in life.

Sex Roles

“Barbie Doll” speaks to the destructive influences of rigid sex roles in modern society, and how women, especially, have been socialized into making their bodies and behavior conform to those roles. We see this socialization at work when the “girlchild” is “presented dolls that did pee-pee / and miniature GE stoves and irons / and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.” Taught from early childhood that a woman should be pretty, intellectually passive, and domestic, the girlchild is apologetic for being none of these. Society, however, offers her compensatory strategies: she is urged to “play coy, / exhorted to come on hearty, / exercise, diet, smile, and wheedle.” This was too much for the girlchild and, as a result of her inability to please those who want her to be someone else, she grows to loathe herself and finally destroys herself in an act of sacrifice, “cut[ting] off her nose and her legs / and offer[ing] them up.” The irony of the last lines of the poem, when the undertaker constructs a woman the girlchild could never be, suggests that societal expectations for sex roles transcend death itself and that, fight as they may against such repressive stereotyping, women will always lose. The moral of Piercy’s parable is in the reader’s response. The lesson is contained in the audience’s outrage at the ways in which women have been (and continue to be) forced to conform to an ideal of femininity — often in ways antithetical to who they are as human beings. Piercy would have her readers take their rage at the poem’s last line as a spur to action.

Topics for Further Study

• What was Barbie’s first date with Ken like? Write a short story about this from a 1960s Barbie’s point of view, then do the same for a 1970s Barbie and a 1990s Barbie. What do your stories tell you about how you think of these decades?
• Make a list of all the toys you can remember playing with as a child. Write an essay on how these toys contribute to a child’s sense of himor herself as a boy or a girl.
• Interview an equal number of men and women, asking them what they consider to be their own most appealing attributes, and what they consider to be the most appealing attributes in a mate. Write an essay describing what similarities and differences you find and what this tells you about how we see ourselves in terms of our gender identity and how others see us.
• Write a poem called “G.I. Joe” about a “boychild’s” socialization.