
Imagine seeing the most beautiful girl in the world. She has blonde hair, the skinniest waist and legs, and the prettiest face. Everybody who sees her wishes they could be her. Girls, especially, will try everything they can to grow up and be just as beautiful as she is. They idolize her and dream of becoming her. In the real world, this is exactly what the media has done to society and little girls growing up in it. Starting when they are little, they see ads on TV, billboards on the side of the road, models, and actresses all portraying this image. After seeing how pretty and perfect they are, they begin to admire them and hope that they too can look like them one day. Creating this image in their mind that there is only one ideal female is something that has corrupt society. Everyone now has this one image that they think is the most flawless person. Being like them would be perfect. However, there is not just one perfect person. One needs to look harder into themselves in order to find that they are just a perfect as whoever it is that they aspire to be. Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” in conjunction with Karen Ruth Brown and Zhang, Hongxia, and Yanbin argue that society and the media presented causes individuals to experience drastic life changes including Body Dysmorphic Disorder.

Today, the media is everywhere. There is no way to get around it. Since this is the case, it is always representing the ideal image of what females are supposed to look like. Karen Ruth Brown states that, “the societal standard for the ideal, female body image has increasingly promoted thinness” (17). This is seen everywhere in the media and as a society, individuals tend to constantly try and keep up with whatever the ideal model is. Since it is shown to be women who are so thin, being different and thicker is not always an option. Individuals in society constantly want to feel like they fit in. There has been research done that has proved that “after viewing the fashion magazines, the participants reported a desire to achieve unrealistic body sizes and weights represented by the thin models published in the magazines” (Brown 19). If girls today do not look exactly like the models or wear the same size, automatically feel indifferent about themselves. So, they start to do things that are unethical and unsafe to change their bodies because they think that everything is wrong with them. Because of everything that these females see throughout the media, this enables them to change how they see themselves. 

In Marge Piercy’s poem, “Barbie Doll,” the protagonist does not see herself following the model of what an ideal female should look like. Instead, she “went to and fro apologizing” for what she looked like (Piercy 10). She started off as any other little girl would, not knowing any better than what she was used to. However, as she got older she no longer saw herself as something innocent. She felt the need to apologize for how she looked since she knew she did not fit the standard. As the poem goes on, she starts to lose her sanity with feeling as if she did not fit in. It was not until she had taken her life, and the undertaker fixed her up that she finally fit what was acceptable for society (Piercy). In order to do this, she “cut off her nose and her legs/ and offered them up” (Piercy 17-18).  After taking her life, when she was laying in the casket, people finally told her that she was pretty (Piercy 23). It was then that she felt as if she matched the standard of what she should look like, “Consummation at last” (Piercy 24). Had the female felt as if she fit the standard she would not have gone to such extremes to try and fit in. 

The main character of Marge Piercy’s Poem “Barbie Doll” sees herself as anything but the norm. Although she has great qualities, instead, “Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs” (Piercy 11). She includes herself in the everyone since she too only sees this about herself. All she wants to do is fit in, so she is advised to do all different activities to get her mind off of how she does not. After trying a whole bunch of things, finally “Her good nature wore out” (Piercy 15). At this point she could no longer take feeling the way she did so she decided she would go to extremes to finally feel like she fits in. She then decided that she would get rid of both her fat nose and her thick legs because those were not the standard. After she rid herself of these body parts, “To every woman a happy ending” (Piercy 25). Her happy ending consists of her finally feeling pretty since she no longer has those body parts. In fact, an undertaker gives her a new nose and when people compliment her, she is finally seeing herself as an ideal female.

Looking in the mirror and not seeing something different than others do is a disorder known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder. It is one in which the individual is so self-conscious about something with their body that they are so absorbed into the thought of it. In fact, Zhang, Hongxia, and Yanbin define this disorder as an “obsessive preoccupation anomaly that is perceived as a severe flaw to one’s appearance which requires extreme measure to hide or repair” (49). For some people, they become so depressed over what they feel is wrong with their bodies, which is why they will go to such extents in order to feel better about it. Sometimes these measures are extremely unhealthy and can even lead to suicide, however sometimes patients will get help. In a study performed by Zhang, Hongxia, and Yanbin, they found that “30% of individuals with BDD had a history of prior suicide attempt” (50). This shows how strong of an impact this disorder has on individuals and their mindsets. Because of how much it affects their everyday lives, it is not unusual that people will take it so far just to feel content with their body images. 

In the poem by Marge Piercy, it is evident that the female in the story does not see herself as a normal, pretty girl. After someone pointed out that her nose was larger than it should be and her legs were fatter, she no longer saw the pretty, young girl that she was brought up to be. Although she had all other good qualities, she saw herself as something other than that. This view that she had of her body image was distorted. This is evident when “in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:/ You have a great big nose and fat legs” (5-6). After this the girl no longer saw herself as she once did, just like everyone else. Her image of herself now that this was pointed out permanently changes her outlook on her body image. In fact, from this point forward it is evident that she has Body Dysmorphic Disorder. This is because she cannot stop thinking about it and eventually she is left feeling “distress, shame, and social isolation” (Zhang, Hongxia, and Yanbin 49). When the protagonist is apologizing to everyone, it shows how ashamed she is of her body and how she is separating herself from everyone else. 

When girls are younger, their parents usually dress them and point them towards the idea of femininity. However, once they start to get a little bit older, they begin to get influenced by society. When girls are in seventh or eighth grade, usually around when puberty starts to hit, they start to find flaws within themselves. Growing up and accepting that the individual is different from everybody else is not always easy. Marge Piercy shows how one girl was brought up just like everyone else, but then one day someone said something to her that ruined her self-image. It ruined it so much that she ended up having Body Dysmorphic Disorder. The classmate who told her that her body was not ideal is exactly what society does to girls daily. He or she pointed out a flaw that the protagonist had and it ended up being the only thing she could think about until it entirely consumed her thoughts. She became so obsessed with her flaws that she ended up taking her own life so that she could finally feel pretty and fit in with the rest of the world and what her classmate would have considered acceptable. 

All around the world people are affected by the images within the media. It is constantly around everyone and pressures individuals to fit standards. When people do not match these exactly, they tend to take extreme measures to try and find ways in which they can become like this. When these thoughts take over their bodies, they end up being diagnosed with Body Dysmorphic Disorder. In Marge Piercy’s poem, “Barbie Doll,” this is exactly what happened to the female. She was so consumed by the thought of not fitting in, that she took her own life in order to finally feel good about herself. It is important that society leans towards changing this attitude so that girls around the world know that they can be different and beautiful. 
