What is beauty? Is it something that is the same for everyone or is it different? Is beauty simply how a person looks or does their personality also play a role? What role does society play in the idea of beauty? Marge Piercy shows us the affects this world can have on a little girl in her poem “Barbie Doll”. This text is about how a girl goes through her life and is constantly put down for things that she cannot change. In order to demonstrate the portrayal of the common struggle, Piercy uses mood, repetition, tone, and diction. Piercy wants you to question the idea of beauty and what it should really mean, she wants you to see what this idea of beauty can do to people.

Piercy uses mood to chastise “everyone” for making this girl to feel ugly to the point where she would rather kill herself than stay alive. The way the piece is written you can see the Piercy is not only very sad that the world is like this but also very angry. Her mood rubs off on you when you read the poem and suddenly you are so both sad and angry. After reading this poem I felt the need to change something about this world. It made it seems like suddenly the world was such a terrible place. This, of course, was Piercy’s intent, she wanted to make a statement and mood was just one device she used to do so.

In the first stanza you are introduced to the little girl who is born as a girl is normally born, but at the end of the stanza a class mate says “You have a great big nose and fat legs.” The legs and the nose are used in every stanza as a way proving a point. In the last stanza Piercy uses the line “Doesn’t she look pretty? everyone said.” to show that now people found her beautiful thanks to the undertaker’s cosmetics. Earlier in the poem she talks about how the girl is a very kind person and nothing was wrong with her, but people only saw a big nose and fat thighs. Piercy is obviously upset that “everyone” finds the girl more beautiful in death than they did in life. 

In every stanza Piercy refers back to the fat nose and thick thighs as a way to show how the ideas of beauty follow girls around everywhere they go. Once the idea that this girl is ugly is said it is constantly in her head and around her. The third stanza shows what a life time of this can do to a person. “Her good nature wore out like a fan belt. So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up.” Piercy tells us that this girl killed herself by cutting the things she and everyone else hated most about her. The last stanza is about the girl’s funeral and Piercy brings up her nose one last time, only this time it is different. This time the girls nose is described as “a turned-up putty nose.” Thanks to the undertaker everyone finally sees this girl as beautiful. I think that’s what Piercy is most upset about. Piercy sees this girl as already being beautiful without needing to be accepted my “everyone”, but because of how cruel people can be this girl would never be able to see herself as beautiful. 

Tone and diction also play a really big role in the meaning of this poem. I would describe the tone of this poem as almost cynical, almost as if Piercy is losing trust in humanity. She is very obviously upset with the idea that people find a lifeless “doll” more beautiful than a girl who is nothing but kind. The last line of the poem is “To every woman a happy ending.” As if the only way for a woman to be happy is to be considered beautiful even if she is only beautiful in death. I find it ironic in a way that she says “happy ending” when it is very clear that this girl was not happy.

The poem is very straight forward in the meaning, I think this is also important. Piercy felt so strongly about this topic that she didn’t even bother with hiding behind metaphors and symbols. Piercy wants you to know exactly how she feels. She tells you what kind of world we live in and she expects you to see it in the world around you. This is Piercy’s way of showing you there needs to be a change; she leaves it up to you to decide how. She doesn’t just come out and say to change this and to change that. She tells you the story and lets you do with what you will with the information. It is obvious that she wants change, or else she wouldn’t have written the poem. However, she doesn’t tell you exactly what kind of change she wants, or that she even wants change. She doesn’t have to come right out and say “This needs to be changed” because the words she chose are strong enough to make you feel that way. 

Piercy uses literary devices and bluntness to tell you the meaning behind her words. By using tone, diction, repetition and mood you really get a feeling of awareness. Suddenly you see what is happening to little girls all around the world. You have to read it multiple times to get the full effect of it, but it’s written in a way that makes you want to read it again. It’s written in a way that you have to read it again just to make sure that you read it correctly the first time. The meaning of this poem is pretty straight forward and easy to grasp. Piercy doesn’t want to make it hard to decipher the poem because she wants her point to get across. I think that is what is most important about this poem.