“Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, is the story about a girl who is so pressured to conform to societies view of how a women should act that she ends up killing herself and finally society approves of how she looks. The story is written by Marge Piercy who grew up in the 1940’s to the 1960’s so she was affected by post WW2 America, the holocaust, and the counter-culture movement. These three events all affected her viewpoint, the theme, and message of the story.

The story goes

This girlchild was born as usualand presented dolls that did pee-peeand miniature GE stoves and ironsand wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:You have a great big nose and fat legs. She was healthy, tested intelligent,possessed strong arms and back,abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.She went to and fro apologizing.Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs. She was advised to play coy,exhorted to come on hearty,exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.Her good nature wore outlike a fan belt.So she cut off her nose and her legsand offered them up. In the casket displayed on satin she laywith the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,a turned-up putty nose,dressed in a pink and white nightie.Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.Consummation at last.To every woman a happy ending.

First, the event that probably affected her the most was the Holocaust. In Nazi Germany, people who were considred pure were supposed to be pure white with preferably blue eyes and blonde hair. All others were considred enemies of Germany, so in the Nazis eyes the impure must be exterminated. They did this through a series of laws and concentration camps that were designed to harass and exterminate the minorities in the state. The most hated target of the Nazis were famously the Jews. Hitler had a personal hatred of the Jews and made it his goal to exterminate all of them. Through concentration camps and execution, over six million Jews died in the Holocaust.

The Holocaust reflects on the story because it gave the author the opionon that we should not care about how a person looks. In her opinion, judging people based on appearance only leads to bad things such as suicide, which also happened to a lot of Jews in the holocaust. She believes that trying to get everyone to lead the same is impossible and only leads to bad things and in extreme cases, crimes against humanity.

The second event that affected her writing was post WW2 America. A lot of things happened in the fifteen years after. Firstly, the economy boomed to unimaganiable heights and a lot of people moved into the middle class. Secondly, a population boom started and Americas population exploded to a historic high. Someone needed to raise the children and now that a lot of people were making more money women could afford to stay at home. This led to the view that the perfect American women should be a housewife.  Finally, a lot of people now had a lot of disposable income which they were now spending on luxury items and products they used to not be able to afford.Companies took advantage of this by creating an image that if you spent a lot of money then you could look like an artificial supermodel. This is why women started spending a lot of money on fashion and accessories.

The post WW2 Ameirca affected the authors views in a variety of ways. it caused her to develop a dislike of the artificial standards of beauty and manners that we expected women to be. She saw that expecting women to live up to an impossible standard of beauty and curtosy was in some cases killing them. She did not believe that women had to just stay at hom, cook, and play with makeup but could be strong independent women.

Finally, the last event to affect the author was the counter-culture. In the late 60’s a lot of young people had begun to question the idea that America was this perfect society and they started to question a lot of social norms such as Christianity, capitalism, and racism. The great economic machine of the 50’s had begun to slow down and a lot of jobs began to move overseas. This affected the young and they started to see a lot of the things wrong with America, which the richer old people could not. They started to experiement with new things such as drugs, rock and roll, and new religions such as Buddhism. This put them in direct conflict with there older parents who were generally more conservative.

This affected the author because she realized that it was okay to rebel because everyone else was doing it. She realized that there are things wrong with this country and she realized that she can do something about it.

The story is written by Marge Piercy who grew up in the 1940’s to the 1960’s so she was affected by post WW2 America, the holocaust, and the counter-culture movement. These three events all affected her viewpoint, the theme, and message of the story. I think this story is really good.
