Over time society as a whole has been developing in order to create a world in which all different kinds of people can live together and be treated equally. While there has been great progress towards reaching this goal there is still discrimination and unfair standards and treatment which is seen much too often and is usually targeted at women. These topics are brought to light in both Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy which shows the unrealistic beauty standards for women and the results they have on women and Bitch Planet by Kelly DeConnick which references these impractical standards while also portraying a hyperbolized version of our world where women are essentially ruled by men. These texts along with support from various books and articles reveals that these standards along with men’s view of women is a major issue in today’s society.

Barbie Doll is a story about a little girl who was born and lived out her life normally until puberty began to happen. Once that happened she suddenly found herself being for not looking a certain way. She was told “You have a great big nose and fat legs” (Piercy 348) by her classmates and even though she was perfectly healthy in every way she was continuously told these negative things about her body and because of this she was forced to a life of “exercise, diet, smile, and wheedle” (Piercy 349). This is because “Men place more importance on the physical attractiveness of women than women do on the physical attractiveness of men. As a result, women’s social opportunities are more affected by their physical beauty than are men’s, so that women are more under pressure to conform to an ideal of beauty” (Mazur 281). As expected this is neither a fun nor healthy way to look at and live your life and as such led to very dire consequences. When the girl finds that it is too difficult, that the pressure to fit these idealistic beauty standards is too much and begins to worry about how she will be successful because our society puts so much emphasis on a woman’s physical attractiveness until “her good nature wore out like a fan belt” (Piercy 349) and she finally snaps. This essay ends with the funeral of this girl who died from cutting off her nose and legs because of all of the harassment and teasing she received about them. However, when they put her in the casket they did her cosmetics very well and finally allowed her to be beautiful in the eyes of those who believe in these ridiculous beauty standards. This shows the awful effects that these standards can have on the women, especially impressionable young girls in our society in the workplace and their everyday lives.

Bitch Planet shares the same message about the insane beauty standards expected of women while also mixing it in with the discrimination of women by men in other means of life as well. This story begins with Penelope Leona in what appears to be a prison outfit in front of many screens on which each one has a different man wearing a suit. These men are referred to as “fathers” and they begin to list off her various crimes while insisting that they mean only to help her. As the story progresses there continues to be a mixture of Penelope in the room from the beginning talking to the fathers and flashbacks to her life before that and how she ended up there. Firstly, the story goes on to a flashback of Penelope with her grandmother on the day that she was taken from her by these so called “fathers” who are trying to help her. It then cuts to the fathers trying to explain why it was that this had to happen, because her mother was “delusional, and refused to see the truth before her. And quite frankly, we are concerned that you are too far gone down that same path” (DeConnick 184). Essentially what these means is that Penelope’s mother refused to concede and try to change herself to meet the standards that the fathers had set and because of that was outcast and locked up just like Penelope. This is a parallel to how women are treated today when they fail to meet the beauty standards set for them. While they are not literally locked up they are almost outcast in the same way that Penelope is in that they will find opportunities such as jobs much harder to achieve because they are women and refuse to comply to the expectations of a needy society. Along with this it is also shown later in story that Penelope did manage to secure a job at one point. This job was as the baker at a café but it was no cakewalk. She was one of if not the only worker and the whole time she was berated by the customers for not making the food on time, and for her weight and looks. While working there you can see tensions between males and females are high as she is forced to diffuse arguments between them as well as watch public broadcasts about absurd beauty standards and watch women there eat fifteen calorie meals. This shows that even if someone chose to try to ignore these standards that it is so difficult as it is always in the media or being followed by a lot of people in any given area. 

Overall these two texts contain many similarities and differences, however they are both used in order to establish the relationship between unobtainable beauty standards and poor treatment of women for not conforming to these standards. One of the similarities is that they both blatantly call out and bring attention to the fact that these beauty standards and over sexualizing lead to only negative lives for women. This is because they are either forced to live a miserable life trying to obtain a physical appearance that society deems acceptable or they will continue living their life as is but suffer the consequences of a society that shuns and looks down upon people who do not conform. Julie Berebitsky who wrote about sexuality in the office supports this claim and said that often times women are often the recipients of sexual behavior from men in the work place because they are insecure about women taking their jobs and need to feel masculine. To further this point in Family Inequality: Diverging Patterns in Marriage, Cohabitation, and Childbearing there is chart which shows that in 2010 women were earning up to almost thirty thousand less dollars than men with the same education. This shows just yet another way in which women are being thought of as less effective workers and forced to pay the price of living in a male dominated world. Lastly there is really only two main differences between these stories, the median through which they are told and the society in which they take place. Barbie Doll is set in a modern day world and through only text in order to make it more relatable and as such makes the ending much more tragic as it seems as though this is a real problem in our society which could lead to the same result. However, Bitch Planet is set in a dystopian universe in which there are several rulers called the fathers who punish and lock up those who do not conform. Along with this it uses a cartoon like form of storytelling in order to give a clear picture as to what they are trying to get across. In a way both of these achieve the same goal by amplifying the point they are trying to make in order to get people to pay attention and understand that it is an issue.

Sometimes in order to get the population to understand that something is a problem it needs to be exaggerated to the point where people are forced to acknowledge it and try to find a solution. This is exactly what you get with both Barbie Doll and Bitch Planet. These texts provide insight into worlds that are shockingly not too different from ours in order to show that unrealistic beauty standards, over sexualizing of women, and mistreatment of women in the workplace are serious issues and can lead to serious consequences throughout the lives of the people affected. Along with support from various different articles and books it is easy to see that these problems need a solution very quickly or we may find ourselves living in a world like the one in Bitch Planet.
