Marge Piercy’s poem Barbie Doll delves into the sensitive topic of feminism and the way it affects the lives of women. This starts at young ages, affecting girls who should be living happy and carefree childhoods. Instead, they’re separated and belittled because their gender comes with such high standards to meet. Although Barbie Doll focus on the second-wave feminism that was occurring in the 1970s, feminism in today’s society is still a relevant and prominent issue. While equality between genders has certainly improved, females are still not completely equal to their male counterparts.

Piercy’s poem describes the childhood of girls with “miniature GE stoves and irons”. These are the toys girls are given to play with, and when they get older, they trade these toys for the real things. They’re expected to become the perfect housewives- cooking their family lavish meals using real stoves, and doing housework like laundry with real irons. From a young age, girls are taught that these jobs were made for them, and not for boys. These are not the toys boys are given to play with, or the jobs they’re expected to do in their adulthood. This mindset sticks with them and they feel forced to continue these jobs and chores throughout their lives. The “wee lipsticks” show that girls are taught at a young age to use makeup in order to dress themselves up and appear more feminine and attractive. As they grow older, they add foundations, eyeliners, mascaras, blush, etc., until their face is no longer natural in any way, because society has told them that this is what “beautiful” is.

The poem also shows readers that girls are only appreciated and admired once it’s already too late. Once they are dead and fixed up one last time for people to see, then they are “perfect”. It is then and only then that they seem to have met and fulfilled the high standards set for them by society. Although the poem ends with “To every woman a happy ending”, it’s hard for readers to believe the women are truly happy. Perhaps this is considered a “happy ending” because the women no longer have to spend everyday of their lives covering up and changing themselves. They no longer have to pretend to be something they aren’t, or to like chores that they may actually despise. This ending suggests that only after death are women free and able to escape the pain brought by the unfair expectations that they failed to meet during their lifetime. These expectations greatly affected the way outlook women had on life. In Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, written in 1962, one young housewife declared “I’m desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality. I’m a putter-on of pants and a bedmaker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I?”. This shows the true sentiments of the women at the time towards the inequality that they were so familiar with.

In the 1970s, women didn’t have a choice of what to do with their life. They had one option and were expected to “marry in her early 20s, start a family quickly, and devote her life to homemaking”. These aspirations were drilled into the minds of young girls through the baby dolls and play kitchen sets that were handed to them in their childhood. Women were expected to be a keeper either for their husband or for their children, instead of being able to be young, independent, and free. They spent “an average of 55 hours a week on domestic chores”- more than 2 whole days each week, dedicated to doing chores. The women who did choose to work were once again very limited in their choices and for the most part, only had three: becoming a teacher, nurse, or secretary. During this time period, girls were not able to have the goals and dreams that boys could, so in their adulthood they settled for less and were forced to marry young and become a housewife. Their husbands were the ones who went off to work, earning money to support the family. Women were not entitled to any of this money, or to any of their husband’s property and if they chose to get a divorce, which was a very hard thing to do at this time, they would surely lose everything and be left empty-handed while the men held on to their paying jobs and roofs over their heads. 

Just 50 years later, times have definitely changed and today’s society is much different, especially when it comes to women. Many women now pursue degrees and careers, and spend those 55 hours instead at a high-paying job earning money in order to support themselves, or to contribute to supporting their family. It’s now acceptable for women to work and use their own money to contribute to providing for themselves and their family, instead of solely relying on a man to provide them with everything It’s also acceptable for women to get a divorce, or to be independent and successful single mothers, raising their kids on their own. Women today can be whatever they dream of and set their mind to.

Although women have much more freedom in choosing and pursuing careers in today’s society, they still have not completely achieved the workplace equality that the feminism movement in the 1970s focused so heavily on. They can go to school and dedicate the same amount of time towards a degree as men do, and pay the same amount of money for the same education, yet employers will still be more likely to hire the male with identical qualifications, solely because of his gender. When women do get the job, they are still not compensated equally. In 2015, women in the United States working full time only made 80% of the salaries men made. They put in the same long hours and hard work, yet do not see the same rewards, benefits, or profits that men do. The gender wage gap has certainly improved, but it is still nowhere close to being completely eliminated. If it continues to change at the same rate as it has since the feminist movements of the 1960s and 70s, women will not reach the same pay as men until 2059.