In the United States of America, Americans are given the opportunity to express individuality to the fullest and become the person in which they want to be. Though Americans are blessed with a large number of opportunities, yet many restrictions are placed on the expression of individuality through stereotypes. In society when stereotypes are mentioned individuals often think of ethnic stereotypes, yet one of the most commonly stereotyped groups of people are women. In American culture women are placed under tremendous amounts of pressure due to created ideas of perfection seen through iconic symbols such as the famous children's toy the Barbie doll, as well as models seen in ads and on television. In Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll" it is seen that through the idea of women feeling inadequate or not perfect, ultimately it can lead to a complete loss of confidence in women and lead to enough emotional destress to cause suicide. Relating to the concept of women feeling extreme pressure due to created perceptions of perfection women also can feel inadequate through a variety of stereotypes discussed in Wendy Molyneux's "I Am Sorry That I Didn't Write a Comedy Piece". By putting into compression these two texts we can see that society places stereotypes on women that are unfair, women develop unrealistic perceptions of perfection through society, and ultimately women develop major insecurities due to stereotypes and trying to reach an unattainable goal of perfection. 

In Molyneux's "I Am Sorry That I Didn't Write a Comedy Piece" a large variety of the common stereotypes that are placed on women can be seen. In Molyneux's text she discusses how every night she prepared an elaborate meal and then states "My fondest hope is that the wafting smells of a home-cooked meal will lure men who are passing by to come inside and eat dinner" (Molyneux 417). This shows the stereotype of women playing the role of a house wife and women needing to being able to perform duties such as cooking and cleaning in order to gain the attention of a male. Molyneux also states that she was sitting by a window "with pillows that I knitted myself while waiting by the phone for potential husbands to call" (Molyneux 416). The fact that she knitted the pillows shows another common stereotype of women performing household tasks that could be found desirable to a male. Through these stereotypes Molyneux is trying to display that members of society seek attraction from members of the opposite sex. By creating these stereotypes that women need to be able to perform household tasks in order to gain attraction from a male creates a large amount of pressure for women. Creating these types of stereotypes for women ultimately is unfair. Though these stereotypes can be viewed as comedic they also distort the reality of some women into believing that the only way to gain attraction from someone is if they meet certain expectations that society has created.  However, though these unfair stereotypes can create pressure for women another major issue is the pressure put on women to try and reach physical levels of perfection created by society. 

In everyday society Americans are surrounded with countless variations of what "the perfect woman" looks like. Ads are constantly being seen on televisions of models who have figures that are unreachable for most young women due to genetics, yet women still are told if they want to be seen as attractive or beautiful they must look as these models do. In ads seen on magazines and newspaper the images often are tampered with for hours at a time, but the public is not told about the modifications made to the images.  The only thing known to the public is the fact that the women are seen by society as beautiful and this creates a distortion to women of what perfection looks like. This unattainable goal of perfection in women can even been seen in children's toys such as the iconic Barbie doll. At a young age many girls can recall playing with Barbie dolls, which seems to be a harmless children's toy. In reality the doll possess qualities that most women are unable to reach. For example the dolls extremely skinny waste, long thin legs, and perfect facial features that create an image most women could never obtain. In Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll" she titles her writing after the iconic figure to allude to the fact that girls are made to feel that this Barbie doll is what perfection looks like, in reality it is an unobtainable goal. Percy shows how a young girl is seen as imperfect and ultimately this leads to the character developing major insecurities. 

In Piercy's text she discusses how a girl experiences a completely normal childhood until she reaches puberty. Piercy then states "A classmate said: "You have a great big nose and fat legs" (Piercy 334). This comment coming from a fellow classmate had a detrimental effect on the confidence of the main character in the text. Piercy even states that the character felt as though "everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs" (Piercy 335). This showing that in the mind of the character she was nothing more than those characteristics to anyone. Ultimately Piercy states that "So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up" (Piercy 335). This leads the reader to conclude that the character commits suicide due to the lack of self-confidence built from the comment made by her fellow classmate. An interesting detail about the text is that the author describes the character as "healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity" (Piercy 334). This brings into question what is true beauty? Has the minds of our society been corrupted into believing that true beauty is what is seen strictly through the unattainable physical characteristics seen through ads and dolls? It is possible that the classmate made the comments about the character were based on their beliefs on beauty strictly off of the created perspective of perfection created by media. Instances like the one created by Piercy in "Barbie doll" show how women can easily create insecurities about their bodies due to the unrealistic perceptions created by society of beauty or perfection. 

Due to society building these unattainable goals of what the "perfect woman" looks like it is common for women to build major insecurities of themselves. This can be seen in Molyneux's "I Am Sorry That I Didn't Write a Comedy Piece" when she is trying on cloths and says "I felt better until I tried on one pair of pants that didn't fit me anymore. And then I totally started to cry again, because I am so fat" (Molyneux 417).  In this particular part of the text the character tries on her entire wardrobe and has an emotional breakdown because one pair of her pants no longer fit her. This shows the insecurities of women to fit a certain mold of being skinny or perfect like the models seen on television and in ads. This particular scenario can be related to Piercy when she describes how the main character in her text feels imperfect because of some of the physical characteristics that she possess. By developing these insecurities about physical appearance the confidence in female's feelings of attractiveness towards themselves lowers and then leads them to believe that they won't be able to find someone who finds them attractive, which creates a feeling of loneliness.

This feeling of loneliness is shown when Molyneux states "I cried for a while on the floor while my cats crawled all over me, purring and being symbolic of how lonely I am" (Molyneux 417). Molyneux brings about comedy to the scenario by showing the stereotype of the main character being a lonely cat lady. Yet, at the same time there is a serious aspect brought into the scenario due to the loneliness the character feels from her pants not fitting properly. Due to        the beliefs society creates that women have to be skinny to be seen as attractive leads the character to believe she is unattractive, and therefore will be a lonely cat lady for the rest of her life. Though Molyneux is able to brush her characters loneliness off through the use of comedy this is not the case in Piercy's text. Piercy's character also experiences loneliness from feeling inadequate to society's views of beauty. The loneliness she feels can ultimately be related back to the insecurities she has developed through society's ideas of perfection and stereotypes that are formed. 

When first reading Piercy's "Barbie Doll" and then reading Molyneux's "I Am Sorry That I Didn't Write a Comedy Piece" it can seem as though the two are incomparable due to the serious tone presented by Piercy and the comedic tone presented by Molyneux. However indirectly the two writing are very similar in the fact that they both discuss a very serious issue in society on how stereotypes and ideas of perfection that are created can have a huge impact on the lives of women. Molyneux discusses how women are given stereotypes that sometimes as society are viewed as funny appear as though they have no effect on women. In reality these stereotypes can put unfair pressures on women to feel as though they have to meet certain requirements in order to be preserved as desirable by someone else. Both Percy and Molyneux writing discuss the negative impacts that our society's views on what the "perfect woman" looks can have on females. Females are made to believe that if they want to look beautiful they must emulate the models seen on ads and on television. In reality this is a goal that is unattainable because these models are distorted and photo shopped to appear the way they do.  Due to our society placing these models on a pedestal insecurities are created in women and in some cases can lead to horrifying results such as suicide which is seen in Percy's "Barbie Doll". In conclusion, the two texts may seem structurally very different, both of the authors are trying to relay the theme that society is having negative effects on women due to unfair stereotypes, developing unrealistic goals for women on what beauty is, and ultimately leading women to developing insecurities due to stereotypes and societies view of the "perfect woman". As a society stereotypes need to be eliminated for not only women but all people. Society must come to the realization that beauty is not seen from the inside, and emphasis must be made on the importance of emotional perfection rather than simply physical perfection. 

