
During the era of second-wave feminism, predominantly when feminists were focused more broadly on social and cultural barriers to equal opportunity, society put expectations and pressures on women through gender role stereotyping. Derived from the well-known Barbie doll figure, the title of Marge Piercy’s poem, Barbie Doll, applied the image of what the perfect American woman should be like in society’s eyes and the struggles women faced because of societal issues in hopes of changing them. This misrepresentation of women focused on unattainable body standards and a living up to stereotyped gender roles that led women to look up to something that did not actually exist in reality. In the end, the girl wanted so much to be what her Barbie represented, that she died trying. These deranged societal standards go hand-in-hand with how women are looked upon in the workforce, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related jobs. According to the U.S. Census Bureau statistics, “women in fields commonly referred to as STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) made up 7% of that workforce in 1970, a figure that had jumped to 23% by 1990. But the rise essentially stopped there. Two decades later, in 2011, women made up 26% of the science workforce” (Del Giudice). Although, while the gender gap is shrinking between men and women in the sciences, women are still underrepresented, resulting in inequality in the workforce, mentorship opportunities, and a difference in salaries. In Marge Piercy’s poem, Barbie Doll, these unequal job opportunities are tied in as the poem expresses stereotypes, sexism, and patriarchal influences that women are submitted to in the 1970’s.

Barbie Doll begins with a girl being born, usual and fitting in perfectly with society’s mold. Listed are dolls, GE stoves, irons, and lipstick; all of these representing the patriarchal society that women serve a role in: cooking and cleaning in the household. By presenting the makeup, this young girl was casted to a specific gender stereotype. Without even realizing it, the girl was taught to conform to this stereotype. For decades, the Barbie doll figure was a cultural icon that was deemed as a role model for young girls, teaching perfection, yet also demonstrating sexism and disparagement. This relates to how women in the workforce are perceived. While investigating the gender differences amongst computer sciences, life sciences, physical sciences, and engineering, results conducted by Michelmore and Sassier display that women are more abundant in life and physical science fields than in computer science and engineering fields. For a very long time women were rarely seen working STEM related jobs; they were mainly for the men to participate in. Just like how the poem starts the young girl out with household items, makeup, and “girly toys,” women were expected to go into certain job fields. However, women started fighting this gender bias battle. A Twitter outburst conveyed how an engineering recruiting campaign battled criticism based on a woman’s appearance, presuming what an engineer really looks like. Female platform engineer Isis Wenger, after facing this disapproval that she did not have the looks of an engineer, launched the #iLookLikeAnEngineer hashtag on Twitter. This created a movement of women and minorities in STEM to tweet pictures to combat stereotypes. Thousands of twitter posts detailing women’s pictures and descriptions of the work they do as engineers have recently been popping up all over twitter, while also incorporating a popular #iLookLikeAnEngineer hashtag. A recruiting campaign for an engineering firm, “OneLogin,” mainly targeted engineers and was not specifically advertising towards a specific gender. However, many of the comments concerning the ad have attracted so much attention due to the appearance of a woman not fitting the look of an engineer. Isis Wenger, the engineer starring in the recruitment campaign, was branded as “#DistractinglySexy,” and this started the criticism of false advertisement and chatter that engineers could not possibly to look so attractive. Wegner also stated, “Some people think I’m not making ‘the right face.’ Others think that this is unbelievable as to what ‘female engineers look like’” (Wegner). This new hashtag trend, initiated as a result of the ad, focuses on showing people that there is not a set look that someone has to have to be part of a group, or work in a certain field. Catching on to this hashtag trend has encouraged women engineers to assist in spreading the word and reconsider “what an engineer should look like.” #iLookLikeAnEngineer demonstrates the importance that women all over are tweeting pictures of themselves to communicate the idea that regardless of one’s appearance, sex, cultural background, or education, as long as one is trying to solve problems and better the lives of others, one is practicing the principles of engineering. The world should welcome this concept to allow for a more efficient, diverse, and productive workforce. This relates to Barbie Doll by exemplifying that women are trying to stray away from society’s model of perfect women that is displayed in Piercy’s poem. When the classmate in the poem said, “You have a great big nose and fat legs,” this discouragement directly relates to Wenger that she did not fit the look of an engineer since she appeared too “sexy” in the advertisement. This correlates to Barbie Doll in a sense that women have a certain look and set of standards that society expects of them. For women engineers, society has placed the idea that women cannot be attractive in order to work in engineering field. This was shown by discouraging Wenger in the advertisement that she was much too attractive to be an engineer. Without encouragement to succeed in something that others want to see you fail in, there will not be any change in society’s expectations. People did not care about all the wonderful attributes the girl in the poem had, but instead focused on what parts of her were considered weird. She did not see the good in herself, but only compared how she was and how society said she should be. For women in the sciences, especially in the 1970’s, many women just shied away from the thought of occupations in STEM related fields since that was out of the norm for women. They just obeyed what society believed they should be: stay-at-home mothers who mainly did house work. 

As Piercy’s poem continues, she then describes the sexist expectations that patriarchal society has identified the girl with. Being a girl, “she was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet, smile and wheedle” (Piercy 349). Society outlines its expectations for women here and the patriarchal power within it administers the belief of certain standards of women. Women were expected to play nice, appear as good girls and demonstrate innocence, be skinny and beautiful, eat little, and be content all the time; however, these external pressures make women feel the need to try and manage it all, which mainly just causes an unhappy state of mind. Compared to men, the lengthy expectations women are supposedly required to meet exhibits sexism. As a little girl, the girl in the poem conformed to society’s norms and was easily influenced by them. Unable to meet all these expectations, the girl gets greatly discouraged and eventually kills herself while trying to become as perfect as society wants her to be. Not being able to live in such depression all the time, she finally gave society her nose and legs. This correlates with how women were challenged in finding jobs in STEM related fields as society mainly expressed that men worked these harder occupations and women were incapable. In an article touching on occupation aspirations and the gender gap in wages, Aisenbrey and Brückner assess the role of job-related segregation according to gender differences amongst West Germans born between 1919 and 1971. Although more females have started to take on what was once thought of as “masculine roles,” men and women are still very divided in the workforce, and earn unequal wages. Women are considered to be less likely than men to realize their occupation ambitions and are more constrained by a gendered structure of vocational professional training. Compared to their male peers, even though young German women may have obtained the same, or better, human capital than men, the return to their skills in the labor market has descended. One statistic explicated, “in the late 1990’s, women in Germany earned about 75 per cent of what the average male made, even though they were increasingly likely to bring the same qualifications as men, as well as substantial labor force experience, to the job” (Brückner, 2004). This gender disparity proves that women have certain societal expectations and are discouraged when deviating from the norm. It is not fair for the girl in the story to feel how she does based on what other people tell her how to look and act; also, it is not fair for the women who are interested in jobs that are thought of as more masculine and unable to earn close to what men earn just based off of gender. 

The first step to creating a community that forgets about molding women to fit certain criteria is to recognize the damage being done to women. For women to be granted more opportunities similar to men, like greater career availability and higher wage-paying jobs, there must be circulation of insight of the persisting inequalities women commonly battle. After analyzing a story written in the 1970’s, an article also similar to date, and a twitter campaign from 2015, these issues women face are shown to still persist into contemporary time. Rather than being discriminated against, women should feel encouraged to partake in activities that they enjoy and obtain more comparable assets that men acquire. Women need to stop feeling like they need to be a Barbie doll and be perfect in every aspect of life. 
