Barbie Doll (Criticism)

Criticism

What Do I Read Next?

• Barbie Unbound: A Parody of the Barbie Obsession, by Sarah Strohmeyer and Geoff Hansen (photographer), treats the Barbie doll as a contemporary American woman and spoofs her. She assumes roles including Safe-Sex Barbie, Barbie Antoinette, Anita Hill Barbie, Marie Curie Barbie, and in honor of her upcoming 40th anniversary, Hot Flash Barbie, who comes complete with tiny estrogen supplements.
• Published in 1997 by Orchises Press, Denise Duhamel’s collection of poems, Kinky, treats Barbie as a “real” character, asking and answering questions such as: What if Barbie were in therapy? What if she were a religious fanatic? Do you know why Barbie and Ken don’t dress in underwear?
• Richard Peabody and Lucinda Ebersole’s Mondo Barbie collects poems and stories about this American icon, many of which are from Barbie’s own point of view.
• Early Grrrl: The Early Poems of Marge Piercy, was published in 1999 by Leapfrog Press and contains many of the poems that helped launch Piercy’s career as both feminist-activist and writer.
• Adios, Barbie, edited by Ophira Edut, collects first-person accounts of young women reflecting on the relationship between body image and race, ethnicity, and sexuality.

As a result of the changes in American society, gender roles for women have expanded greatly since the 1950s. These changes have been tracked by the Barbie doll, which literally has had scores of incarnations, including Francie the African-American Barbie, and “Punk” Barbie, a 1980s doll. More recently Mattel has announced plans to give Barbie a makeover. She will have a “less graduated profile,” in response to children’s interest in more realism in their toys.

Source: Chris Semansky, in an essay for Poetry for Students, Gale, 2000.

Alice Van Wart

Alice Van Wart is a writer and teaches literature and writing in the Department of Continuing Education at the University of Toronto. She has published two books of poetry and has written articles on modern and contemporary literature.

In her essay “Rethinking the Seventies: Women Writers and Violence,” Elaine Showalter says women writers in the 1970s were experiencing the beginning of an exciting new phase where they “seemed at last able to express anger and passion, to confront their own raging emotions.” Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” is a highly polished and ironic poem that perfectly demonstrates Showalter’s thesis. In “Barbie Doll,” Piercy scathingly condemns contemporary expectations placed on women concerning their appearance. The view she expresses in the poem is a feminist one, consistent with the political views she expresses in her numerous poetry collections, novels, and essays, particularly those views that condemn society’s attitudes towards women.

“Barbie Doll” tells the story of a girl who grows up to find out she does not look quite as she should. Because she wants the approval of others she attempts to compensate for her imperfections in other areas. She soon grows tired of her efforts and in desperation chops off the offending parts of her body, taking her life as she does. In the hands of the undertaker, however, she finally achieves what she could not in life: perfection and hence approval.

The apt title given to the poem points to the central and controlling device of irony and the symbolic associations between the doll and the women in the poem. The Barbie Doll, more than being a favorite with adolescent girls, is a cultural icon of femininity that carries with it complex associations of ideal beauty and desirability. Piercy wishes to expose the destructiveness behind such ideals by showing the extent to which many women will go to achieve them.

Told through the third person point of view in four stanzas of free verse, the poem delineates the far-reaching consequences of a women’s concern with her appearance as measured by an external ideal. The use of the third person point of view reinforces the increasing sense of alienation and self-loathing the woman in the poem experiences towards herself because she does not conform to this ideal. In the first stanza, Piercy shows the early indoctrination of young girls into feminine stereotypes. The second stanza conveys society’s concern with women’s appearance, in general, while the third stanza shows the extent to which women will go to conform to an ideal. The fourth stanza provides a concluding ironic twist showing how the woman in the poem achieves in death what she could not in life.

In the first line of the first stanza the poet introduces the subject of her poem as the “girlchild.” Distinguishing her only by gender serves to objectify her, and the fact that she is “born as usual” suggests there is nothing out of the ordinary about the birth of this girl. The enjambment between lines one and two, however, clarifies that “as usual” also means she is greeted into the world as girls usually are with presents of “dolls that did pee-pee / and miniature GE stove and irons / and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy”. The images of “dolls,” “stoves,” “irons,” serve to show the early indoctrination of girls into the woman’s world of motherhood and domesticity, while the image of “wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy” begins her introduction into the guileful art of femininity.

In the fourth line the poem’s focus shifts from childhood to “the magic of puberty.” The use of the word “magic” to describe this period of the girl’s life suggests the powerful and extraordinary nature of the emotional and hormonal changes that transform her from a girl into a young woman capable of bearing children. However, the magic of puberty is destroyed for her when a classmate tells her she has “a great big nose and fat legs.”

In the second stanza the young woman has become so preoccupied with her imperfections that she is unable to see her positive qualities. Although she is “healthy, tested intelligent / possessed strong arms and a back” and even possesses “abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity,” she is so conditioned to be over-concerned with her appearance that these positive qualities fail to have any value. Because she only sees her imperfections and believes she has no value because of them, she goes “to and fro apologizing.” So obsessed is she with her imperfections that she begins to believe that what “everyone saw” when they looked at her was “a fat nose on thick legs.”

By collapsing the images of “a great big nose and fat legs” into the comic image of “a fat nose on thick legs,” Piercy uses synecdoche [a figure of speech in which the part stands for the whole, or the whole stands for the part], to draw attention

both to her use of irony and to the sad fact that the young woman can only see herself in the terms of some artificial ideal.

In the third stanza the woman is “advised to play coy / exhorted to come on hearty / exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.” She is pressured into trying to mold herself into what she is not and to compensate for her shortcomings. The verbs “advised” and “exhorted” suggest the insistence placed on the woman to please others, particularly men, while the advice to “play coy” and to “come on hearty” point to the artificial means women are encouraged to use to make themselves desirable.

As an artifice of desire that measures itself against an impossible ideal, the female body requires endless maintenance to shape it for public acceptance and idealization, and this woman fails to shape herself into the image of what is desirable. Eventually she tires of her efforts and breaks down. As the poet puts it, her “‘good nature’ wore out / like a fan belt.”

The poet’s use of simile [a figure of speech comparing two unlike things, often introduced by “like” or “as”] shows the extent to which the woman has accepted society’s objectification of her body. Like the fan belt in a car that wears out and is discarded, the woman wears herself out in her attempts to perfect herself. Her body becomes an alien thing. Because of its imperfections it has no value, “so she cut off her nose and her legs / and offered them up.” Since she is the sum of her imperfect parts, “a fat nose on thick legs,” by offering them up she is in fact sacrificing her life. The image of the woman cutting off parts of her body points to a growing popularity among women of using cosmetic surgery to perfect their appearances. More generally, it also suggests the history of abuse that women have inflicted on themselves in the name of beauty.

In the final stanza the woman lies in a casket made up for public display. Her face has been “painted on” by the undertaker’s “cosmetics” and her “putty” nose has been “turned up.” She lies on “satin” dressed “in a pink and white nightie.” Everyone who comes to see her says, “Doesn’t she look pretty?” Ironically, she achieves “consummation at last.” “Consummation” in this context means literally to complete through perfection. The woman achieves in life what she could not in death.

The last two lines of the poem move beyond ironic expression and are rich in implication and scathing in intent. Piercy satirizes the traditional ending to many conventional fairy tales that conclude with the female protagonist living happily ever after with the consummation of marriage. Piercy subverts the traditional implication of sexual consummation to consummation in death. By sacrificing herself the woman finally receives the approval she had always wanted from others. The last line moves from the specific woman to women in general as Piercy concludes her poem: “to every woman a happy ending.” The irony is clear. The woman lying in her casket is made up to look just like a Barbie doll; even her nose has been turned up. The woman, however, no longer bears any resemblance to the person she was. She is made-up and false, and, just like a Barbie doll, lifeless and perfect.

In “Barbie Doll,” Piercy has found the perfect vehicle to express her anger and to criticize both women and the society they live in. By equating the woman in the poem with the image of the Barbie Doll and by using irony as a controlling device within the poem, the poet shows both the insidious way in which women are objectified as well as their own cooperative part in the process.

Source: Alice Van Wart, in an essay for Poetry for Students, Gale, 2000.

“Because she did not conform to social expectations, Piercy’s girlchild did not ‘consummate’ the process of socialization. Because she could not ‘play coy, / come on hearty, / exercise, diet, smile and wheedle, ’ the girlchild suffered intense emotional conflict, which eventually resulted in her taking her own life.”