In the poem, “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, she begins the poem with the birth of a "girlchild" and all the things that go along with growing up as a girl such as, dolls, miniature GE stoves, irons, and lipsticks the color of cherry candy. When the girl hits puberty, her classmates begin to tell her she has a big nose and fat legs. The girl is healthy, intelligent, and strong but the kids continue to make fun of her for her big nose and fat legs. She is told as she is growing up that she must behave a certain way and she should always have a smile on her face. Eventually the girl gets fed up with all of the insults from society, being told how she has to look, how she has to act, and what she has to do, so she cuts off her nose and legs and offers them up. I think that this means that she gets plastic surgery, but in the poem, she is in a casket and the mortician made a fake nose for her and because of her fake nose, everyone finally says she looks pretty. Because she finally feels like she looks pretty, the girlchild seems to have a happy ending, even though she is in fact dead. With this poem, Piercy presents a strong opinion on the United States’ social standards of women. Piercy's poem explores everything that comes along with being a woman in our society. I think that my two outside sources provide the reader with a better understanding and support of the poem and the unequal treatment of women because of the information I am going to provide on second-wave feminism, and the realization of gender issues in America. 

To further help with the understanding of this poem, Marge Piercy wrote this poem in 1973, which was during the second-wave of feminism that was beginning to transform the politics and culture of America. Piercy grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Detroit that was plagued with racial tensions. She quickly became very active in the student and anti-war movements. Her literature consistently attacked social and cultural issues that specifically dealt with gender, class, and environmentalism, but the focus was the lives of women in the United States.

 My first outside source, “Experiencing second-wave feminism in the USA” written by Sari Biklen, Catherine Marshall, and Diane Pollard applies to Marge Piercy’s poem, “Barbie Doll”, because it shows the social and gender expectations of a women and the cultural barriers that women must go through compared to men. It also shows the stereotypes and sexism that women had to deal with in the 1960s and 1970s. The purpose of the poem was to show how women struggled in society. Based on the information from my source, I can argue that sexism was prominent within the 1970s based on this quote and experience from Catherine Marshall: “The personal and political collided when I experienced the nauseating horror of sexual harassment in my workplace. I had no theoretical literatures, just confusion, fear, and anger, as I saw how the culture of policy, administration, and men-protecting-other-men left me no credible voice of protest” (Marshall 453). Marshall did not go on to explain exactly what the incident was that occurred but this goes to show that sexism was prominent. To this day I feel that a lot of women are still not treated equally, even after the second-wave of feminism in the 1970s. 

The information from this source changed my reading from the text by giving it the feminist perspective. Without that reading, the poem originally seemed like it was about a little girl growing up, but not happy about the way she looks, so she gets plastic surgery to make herself feel better. With the additional reading of the source, you get the perspective that the reason she is upset with the way she looks and the reason she gets plastic surgery is because of society, and the pressure society puts on women to be intelligent, successful, and beautiful. It is important to learn the historical and cultural context of a text because without the background of the author and her cultural perspective, the reader might miss part of the message that the author is trying to send, like I almost did. 

Going more into the history of the text, the title of the poem came from the popular toy, the Barbie doll. Barbie was one of the most famous cultural icons during this time, which was the 1970s. It basically showed what the perfect American woman should look like and be like but it ended up representing a body figure that was impossible to obtain, which ended up becoming a reason for the huge stereotypes in women. Basically, Barbie led this little girl to her death because she was trying to be something she could not be, which was the figure of Barbie. This little girl in the poem was corrupted because of the society of America that she was born in and because of that she was never satisfied with herself, which ended with the death of a little girl. This could happen to any little girl because of the pressures that society puts onto women, so there needs to be a change. 

In my second outside source, “Barbie Doll and GI Joe: Exploring Issues of Gender” Robert Perrin looks at the issues of gender from a white male perspective. He is trying to teach a class about the language that Piercy uses throughout the poem and how this relates to how women are treated unequally. After going through each stanza of the poem he explains that, “By examining the language throughout the poem, students may discover the insensitivity-and ultimate cruelty of a society that encourages patterned behaviors, that fails to recognize the innate values people possess, that creates artificial demands, and that perpetuates unhealthy expectations” (Perrin 84). Piercy’s poem challenges the reader to question the social norms in America, including societal and personal expectations for all women. As Perrin goes on with his class discussion, he brings up a parallel to the poem. He compares the toy, G.I. Joe, to the Barbie doll, which is the toy that is presented to the boys in their adolescence. Compared to the Barbie doll for girls, Perrin explains that the G.I. Joe presents social, personal, and psychological implications as well. Because of the G.I. Joe a boy might feel that he must act a certain way and look a certain way. He explains that by examining parallels such as the G.I. Joe for boys it teaches the reader about gender awareness, which is something that cannot be overlooked in the poem and the discussion of the poem. If we only read Piercy’s poem without further investigating the text, the reader will be insensitive toward the principles of gender neutrality. The reader must look beyond his ow perspective to discover and teach about the power of societal norms and gender. 

There needs to be a realization for men and society in general in America that the social norms are wrong with the treatment of women and quite possibly men as well. The artificial demands, the advertisement of women in America, the sexism, the cultural barriers, and the way the media shows women is unhealthy for our people. The two articles I further investigated gave me a much greater understanding of Piercy’s poem and because of that I feel that I am much more aware of the true meaning of feminism. I believe that right now, feminism has a somewhat bad reputation because of the way social media presents it. By reading these articles, I have gained an appreciation for feminism. Overall, society needs to change its behavior toward women and society needs to recognize that our view of women in the world is unhealthy. The standards that society holds for women is merely impossible to obtain, which is why there needs to be a change. G.D. Anderson sums it up best with her quote, “Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.” Let us start now by making a change.
