




“I Am Sorry That I Didn’t Write a Comedy Piece” by Wendy Molyneux and “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy both relate to feminism and the feminist movement. Molyneux and Piercy are both using a sarcastic type of writing which creates a distinct piece that leads readers to learn about feminism and have a good time reading their pieces. The texts signify important parts to the feminist movement, which are the rights and equality of women; they both change perceptions of the readers on the way women are treated in the time they were written and the way women should be treated in the future. 

Molyneux’s work relates to the way women are treated in the present and uses the authors life/point of view to give readers an understanding of a woman’s life. Throughout the work there are sarcastic remarks of stereotypes people make relating to women like how women are so emotional, that they can get distracted easily, and that women are always looking for a man to wed. Molyneaux states from her perspective “I happened to see a lady walking down the street with a baby of her very own. So then I started crying again because I don’t have a baby.” (521) She then continues her story stating “I tried on all my clothes, and I felt better until I tried one pair of pants that didn’t fit me anymore.” (Molyneux 522) With this quote, she is signifying the way people see women and believe they are too emotional about everything.  Molyneux goes into another stereotype of women never wanting to be single when she states “Every night, I like to make an elaborate dinner. Then, I set it on the table and open all the windows. My fondest hope is that the wafting smells of a home cooked meal will lure men who are passing by to come in and eat dinner.” (522) The whole work she never gets her objective of writing a comedy piece completed and goes with another stereotype. Throughout the story we learn, through sarcastic remarks and comedic relief, that women go through these stereotypes. Readers see through the story that women aren’t treated right with the amount of stereotypes and assumptions we make about them.

Molyneux’s work leads towards why she wrote the story in the first place. At the end of the story she discusses how Christopher Hitchens wrote an article saying women just aren’t funny. Even though this isn’t true, it hurts women that someone would say/assume something like this, so Molyneux is using comedy to talk about what she assumes of Christopher Hitchens. She calls him “a huge douche who runs a successful child pornography business and has an inability to get an erection unless he’s reading Nazi literature.” (Molyneux 523) This is a lie or an exaggeration, but that is exactly what this story is about. She is trying to say through her work that women get treated with these lies every day and that there are multiple lies and exaggerations about them. The story gives the readers some comedy, but it also helps readers see from a women’s point of view on the way they are treated.

Molyneux is present feminism, while Piercy is the feminism in the past that helps start the movement of women equality. “Barbie Doll” is a poem that was written in 1973 and is about a girl that went through life. Piercy starts off the poem with the girl being born that was normal and then throughout the story she begins to go through puberty. As the girl goes through puberty, she begins to get made fun of for the small issues she has, meanwhile she was “healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive, and manual dexterity.” (Piercy 348) Even though she shouldn’t get made fun of because she had plenty of good qualities, she still did because she had a few “bad” qualities. Piercy is trying to illustrate that the “bad” qualities shouldn’t be bad; they are only looked at that way because the way society is structured, people create these impossible expectations for all women. By the end of the poem the girl commits suicide and now with makeup and cosmetics on she looks pretty with a “happy ending.” Piercy is making a sarcastic remark at the end of the poem by illustrating this false happy ending and that women are never good enough in their lifetime. The reader’s perception of how women in the 70’s was treated becomes clear through the poem that women were judged by their looks and that its destroying women’s perception of who they are when they try to change themselves. 

The feminist movement throughout time is shown through these works and we can start to see similarities and differences between “I Am Sorry That I Didn’t Write a Comedy Piece” and “Barbie Doll.” Both of these pieces help illustrate and lead feminism during their respective time periods that they were written. “Barbie Doll” was written during second wave feminism and is used to help spread equality for women by using her writing, while “I Am Sorry I Didn’t Write a Comedy Piece” was written during third wave feminism and is used to get all women together for this feminist movement.  Molyneux and Piercy both use a sarcastic way of writing to get their point across. Although they both use this techinique, Piercy used more of a depressing sarcastic way of writing, while Molyneux uses a comedic sarcastic way of writing. Both styles were used because the time they wrote each of their pieces and the audience they were each writing for. Molyneux wrote her piece closer to the present and was to bring all women together, so she used her style of comedic relief with a serious issue to try and attract all women to join this movement. “Barbie Doll” was written in the 70’s and Piercy’s style of depressing and harsh truth was used to get the word out for equality between women and men. When these stories are combined, we can see the changes throughout time and the way that the stories affect the feminist movement in their own way. 

The stories tell readers about the way women are affected as adults, but “Barbie Doll” goes a step further by illustrating the societal expectations of women as children. Piercy illustrates the societal way of thinking by stating “This girlchild was born as usual and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.” (348)  This view of girls is normal to us from when we were born, so many people don’t see the problem when reading this poem. The problem is that we see girls getting these items as children as normal. The items that are given to girls are dolls instead of action figures, stoves and irons to symbolize that they should practice using these items for when they grow up, and lipstick to symbolize that they need to change themselves. Piercy is trying to illustrate that this way of thinking is affecting girls for when they grow up and that this is where the problem of equality starts. This part of the poem is still relatable today, which means that we haven’t changed this issue yet for girls at a young age.

These works give us a better understanding of the feminist movements throughout time and the way women were treated, but they also lead us towards the future of equality. The stories about feminism strongly affects readers, women or men, in a way that makes them change or increase their values of women. As we saw with “Barbie Doll” and other past works/efforts to increase the popularity of feminism and equality, the present is now getting closer and closer to equality. With the different goals that that third wave feminists, such as Molyneux, then the second wave feminists had, we can now see the difference in priority shifting from men and women just to start thinking about equality to trying to get all women on the same path towards equality. These past works are helping change the way women are seen and soon enough equality will happen between men and women.

“Barbie Doll” and “I Am Sorry That I Didn’t Write a Comedy Piece” leads readers to understand and see the way women were treated in the past and are treated today. The type of writing that both Piercy and Molyneux use help gives us readers a new way of seeing the world and the way it still needs to be changed. After all, the world can be changed by these people that want to teach others about what they believe is right. Even though feminism has been going on for decades, its pieces like these that help progress the movement and lead us towards the goal of equality. 

  