
The article from the textbook is Barbie Doll written by Marge Piercy. It mainly argues about what the society force girls to be what society supposed them to be rather than being herself. The two outside sources I picked mainly argue about why this phenomenon happened and find the reason. It provided evidence about how the society influenced on women which is the example of the social standards for women expressed in Marge Piercy’s poem “Barbie Doll” (1). And more importantly, it helps to explain why it happens.

In the text, writer used “exercise, diet, smile and wheedle”(2)  to express how the society hold on her life. The outsource I choose used example of fashion-beauty-diet industrial to help me get better understanding of the text. The first one I picked is "We're Not Barbie Girls: Tweens Transform a Feminine Icon"(3).  The writer is Louise Collins, April Lidinsky and Andrea Rusnock. All of them are biologists. They worked together to find out what it means to be embodied as female in American culture among girls. They did the research and find out that society has such strong power that it can influence and even change individual’s life, especially on women. Women have to give up being themselves and be someone else in order to match the society’s expectations. The whole environment that women lived in, teach them how to act and fake. This is not only sick, but also match the topic in Marge Piercy’s Barbie Doll. This phenomenon still exists today. The author used the example of the fashion-beauty-diet industrial to explain this phenomenon. "Kid-friendly" (4) cosmetic products like fruit-flavored lip-gloss and body glitter are now targeted for sale to pre-teens and younger (5). Imagine yourself as a 9 years old girls, and the advertisement is showing you the brand new product from a fancy company. A popular lip-gloss. Do you have the ability to judge whether it is good or not? It’s common sense that a kid doesn’t know to how to distinguish what is right and what is wrong. They are still too young to make choice on their own. There are two possible situations will occur: The first one is a girl get one happily. She will show her friends how fancy it is. Other kids will prefer to get one as well. The second situation is this girl didn’t get one at first, but soon she finds out her friends have one. Then this native girl probably wants to get one just like her friend. It is so frustrating that almost 50 years after Marge Piercy wrote the Barbie Doll, the same phenomenon still exists.

In the second outside source, Kerstin W. shands analysis Piercy’s thoughts about women’s status in different periods of time. The author tried to explain the relationship between women’s status and different time periods. “In this book, the first comprehensive, critical survey of all of Piercy's fiction to date which including her newest novel, "The Longings of Women"(7) , the author places Piercy in American literary history and in American neofeminist thought” (2). In the end of the poem, the girl died in peace. She doesn’t have to obey the rules form the society. Finally, she was perfected, which is irony. The outside source changed my thoughts about the chosen text. I thoughts it is just occur in that single period of time. In fact, the outside source indicates that from agricultural civilization to modern civilization, the tragedies always occur. The tide never changes. The society always give pressure to women and makes them fit the aesthetic in the different period of time. For example, around 4,000 years ago, female has no status in ancient China. Male were able to marriage with several females if they want. At that time, female has to obey the rules from males. That’s exactly what our society want females to do. 1,000 years later, the status of female improved a lot. They were able to participate in education. 1,200 years later, females has equal rights from law in China. 

In conclusion, the outside sources not only give examples about how the society hold on women’s lives to help me understand the poem better, but also change my thoughts about the chosen text by argue the tide and women status in the history.
