Barbie dolls have always been one of the most popular toys for little girls in the United States. The dolls always represent a beautiful girl that has a very handsome boyfriend. In the poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy she talks about an ordinary teenage girl and the struggles she goes through as she grows up into an adult. The issue is that in the 1970’s women were judged by their physical looks and not by their skills because of the toys they are raised with and how the society expected a girl to act.

The 1960s and 70s were a tough time for women. Women were supposed to “marry in her early 20s, start a family quickly, and devote her life to homemaking” (Tavaana). Men on the other hand were to work Monday through Friday, support the family, and make the decisions on what was to be done when they were with each other. Some women started fighting this saying that they have the right to be out of the house, get a job, and even not marry or have kids if they didn’t want too. Even if women wanted to work and were able to retain a job they almost always were given a lower wage then a male was for the same job. 

In 1962, things began to change when Betty Friedan released the book “The Feminine Mystique” (Tavaana). This book challenged the social norms motivating women to get out of the house and find work for themselves. This can be seen as the beginning of the feminist movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s. In 1966 the National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed. This organization was formed “to lobby Congress for pro-equality laws and assist women seeking legal aid as they battled workplace discrimination in the courts” (Tavaana). Tavaana states that the National Organization for Women popularized the idea that “The personal is political”. Personal is political basically means that the political issues also effected women’s personal life such as “their relationships, sexuality, birth control and abortion, clothing and body image, and roles in marriage, housework and childcare” (Tavaana). The movement was aided by World War II because the sudden growth in the economy opened up many jobs. Many of these jobs ended up being filled by women because most men already had a job and somebody had to take these spots in order for the economy to be able to function at its best. Eventually women were not viewed as the average “house wife” but as another person, co-worker, and citizen.

The girl in “Barbie Doll” is separated from her human image and described more as an object or, in this case, a doll. Piercy describes how the girl was viewed and uses words such as “possessed” and how she “tested intelligent” instead of using phrases like “She was very pretty and was very smart.” When Piercy described her as intelligent it goes to show that she was not just an average girl but actually contained special properties, unlike a doll which has no brain. In the 1960’s and ‘70’s women were fighting the issue of how Barbie Dolls “promoted sexist stereotypes… mindless consumerism, and unrealistic body image.” (Williams). The doll at the time was a huge controversy among parents and rightfully so. The doll is humanly disproportional and a woman would not be able to live if she was built like the doll. This is the cause of girls being objectified by their looks and feeling the need to conform to society, because according to the doll if you are not perfect then no one will like you. In a study done by Dittmar, comparing the effects of having a Barbie doll compared to having a Emme doll, which is a doll that is modeled after the plus-size model Emme, it was shown that “young girls experience heightened body dissatisfaction” (Dittmar) from having a Barbie doll. This is one of the main reasons that women and kids were so self-conscious and had a lower self-esteem thus encouraging them to change and conform to the idea of society that they should be skinny, pretty, perfect, and not themselves. The girl in “Barbie Doll” is said to have “Cut off her nose and her legs” (Piercy, Lines 17-18). This is after she was told that she had a “fat nose” and “thick legs”. Because of what she was called she went and tried to change too what she thought others wanted her to look like.  Luckily the idea of Feminism came about to help change the way women viewed themselves. 

Feminism ultimately led to the idea of not conforming to society’s view of the “perfect girl”. Female empowerment leads to a better, stronger self-image than someone without empowerment. Empowerment can be defined as “gaining control over one’s life and influencing the organizational and societal structure in which one lives” (Peterson 640). If you view yourself as a powerful person and understand that your self-image is more important than how society thinks you should look then you will feel better about yourself.  One feminism program called “Girl Talk” is for teenagers going through the developmental stage and its goal is to “prevent the development of body image and eating disturbance in girls” (Peterson 641). This shares a direct correlation with the negative effects caused by the usage of Barbie dolls in developing teens and children. The program was created to combat exactly what the girl in “Barbie Doll” went through from the society that judged girls by the way they looked. If the program would have been around at the same time this poem might have never happened because the girl wouldn’t be trying to change her appearance. 

The final event that impacted feminism and the way women were viewed in the 1970s was the passing of Title IX. Title IX states that men and women, girls and boys, have to receive equal opportunities in sport. In “Barbie Doll” the girl is said to be “healthy”, possessing “strong arms and back”, and “manual dexterity” (Piercy, Lines 7-9). If a girl has any or even all of these qualities, then she is so much more special than a plastic Barbie doll and should not be judged by the way she looks. The thing is this poem was written before the implementation of Title IX so more than likely the opportunity to compete in sport was not a possibility. Title IX impacted feminism by giving women and girls the chance to compete, which lets them forget about what others are thinking about them and focus on working hard to achieve a goal. There might be some differences in the number of people that follow women’s sports, or enjoy watching it but “many colleges and universities have similar numbers of athletic teams for men and women” (Lockhart). This would not have been possible without the feminist movement pushing the limits of what women were viewed as capable of doing. It has been shown that competing in athletics, male or female, increases the perceived self-worth of the athlete. With this being so this allows women who compete to feel good about having the “strong arms and back” like the women in the poem when this used to be frowned upon by society. In fact, there was a study done by at Brigham Young University that revealed “No significant differences were found between men and women on any of the items of the Worth Index” (Lockhart). The Worth Index was a way that Lockhart measured the self-confidence and self-worth of the athletes. Title IX greatly helped push the feminist movement and improve girls and women’s self-image throughout the ‘70s.

From being compared to a Barbie doll, to fighting for change of how women were viewed in society, to ultimately getting equal opportunities to compete in athletics, none of this would have been possible without feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. Women finally were judged not by their looks or how they act, but by their abilities and skills. “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy pushed for change by showing how girls felt due to the societal norms and showed that it was time for men in society to change or have a movement for women to change it themselves.  
