In today’s world, the media portrays women as being extremely thin with beautiful faces, but that is not a real woman. Every other commercial on television is a beauty ad telling women how to be more attractive. If you wear this makeup, then you will look like a model or if you eat this protein bar you can be a thin as a Victoria’s Secret model. All of these things are around us each and every day and each time we see one of those commercials or ads it changes our view of society. These ads stress the importance of beauty and alter the perceptions of girls around the world into thinking that it doesn’t matter if you are healthy or intelligent, it only matters that you are beautiful. In the poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, Piercy expresses these unrealistic body standards set by the media and beauty industry today. 

 When Piercy wrote “Barbie Doll” the same body standards were in place in the media. Every ad in magazines and on television had a beautiful women telling the viewers how they could look like her. There were weight loss ads telling women how to lose weight fast. If you buy a certain product, it is “guaranteed to reduce waist, abdomen, hips and thighs a total of 6-10 inches IN JUST ONE DAY!” (Heller,26) This gives women the idea that they need to lose weight in order to be attractive to men. As if Being attractive to men is the number one goal of being a woman. In the poem, after the girl is told she has “thick legs” she is then “advised to… exercise, diet, smile and wheedle,” (Piercy) The Standard that the media is setting with ads like these, is that if a woman’s body doesn’t look like a models body, then she has to exercise and diet until she has the body of a model. 

There was a study done by Alexis Tan in 1979 testing the importance of beauty ads in America. Tan used scientific research that she conducted, through experiments, to figure out the effects of television beauty ads on adolescent minds. Tan’s goal was to “determine whether exposure to TV beauty commercials affected a viewer's perceptions of the importance of beauty, sex appeal and youth in various "real-life" roles.” Piercy goes into the importance of beauty in the poem when she talks about the girl going “to and fro apologizing” (Piercy) for her big nose and thick thighs. Society has put it in young girl’s minds that being thin and beautiful is the only important thing in this world when that is completely false. 

Society is also plagued with the idea that beauty is the only important thing for a woman. Piercy mentions that the people around the girl only “saw a fat nose on thick legs.” (Piercy) This shows how the media has also affected everyone around the girl into thinking that just because she doesn’t look like a model, that she cannot achieve anything in her life. The people around her cannot look past her nose and thighs to see what kind of human being the girl is. Society has been taught by the media that if a woman is not beautiful, then she cannot thrive until she is beautiful. The woman should workout and starve herself until she has the body of a model so that her work and ideas can be appreciated by the world. 

The study focused on how the beauty ads on television affect “audience conceptions of social reality, or perceptions about the facts,” (Tan,285) The study goes into how beauty commercials can affect the minds of adolescents who watch those commercials. The commercials portray a false reality in which gives the adolescent male and females unrealistic expectations of the female body. The perceptions of reality of the viewers of these commercials are then altered on the importance of sex appeal. The girl in the poem has been affected by these commercials to thinking she is not good enough because of her looks, when in reality, “she was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back,” (Piercy) The media has changed her perceptions of what is important through beauty commercials. The girl is healthy, which should be the only priority, she is also intelligent which is one of the most important things in life but she doesn’t see it that way. The way she sees it, if she is not as beautiful as a model she will never be successful in life so she decides to kill herself. The results of the experiment showed that “Subjects exposed to the beauty commercials gave significantly higher importance ratings to the beauty characteristics for the role "to be popular with men".”(Tan,288)  Those who watched other commercials did not have these views.

The media has so much power over the thoughts of young girls that they decide to kill themselves because they feel they are inferior to the models they see on television.  At the end of the poem, Piercy mentions that the girl commits suicide and the only time she feels good about herself is when she is in the casket with the undertaker’s makeup on. At the end of the poem Piercy says “to every woman a happy ending.” (Piercy) which just proves that the only way that the girl was going to be happy was if others thought she was beautiful. The people around the girl put her down her entire life for not being pretty enough, but when she was dead they all said “Doesn’t she look pretty?” (Piercy) If only looks weren’t as important in society then maybe the girl would not have killed herself. If it didn’t matter what society viewed as attractive, then the girl would not have viewed her looks as important as she did. 

The media and the beauty industry has changed viewer’s perceptions of what is important for the worst. When these ads and commercials are viewed over and over again, they slowly change the viewer’s ideas of what is important and as a result now view beauty as the most important aspect of life for a woman. Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” is the perfect example of how many people view beauty as the most important aspect of life. The girl in the poem did not feel beautiful and therefore did not feel as though she was good enough to live so she killed herself. The girl in the poem was intelligent and healthy, which should have been enough, but no, people put her down because she didn’t have the body of a model. Recently there has been a push in the beauty industry to use “real women” in their ads as opposed to using size zero models. This push was stopped quickly by many companies in the beauty industry because they claimed that using any models except the size zero models effected sales for the worst. One company, Aerie, however has stuck with the “real women” campaign and their sales have been booming. Aerie has been using real, photocopied women in their underwear ads and it has sent sales through the roof. Maybe this is the push the beauty industry needs to stop setting the standards for women so high.
