At the beginning of the poem the girl is portrayed as a typical little girl without a care in the world. Her parents and family members presented her with gifts and toys like any other child would be. She receives gifts like Barbie dolls, play ovens and pretend make up. Piercy uses an anaphora in the first stanza as she repeats the word “and” three times (2,3,4). This is an effective strategy because it stresses the amount of gifts the girl is given to play with.
These children are way too young to be worrying about what they look like when they look in the mirror. It is appalling for these grown adults, especially their moms, to be adding all the pressure and stress that should not be obtained until high school when their peers will start to judge naturally, it is disgusting and cruel. These young girls are dressed up provocatively and imitate grown woman by winking and blowing kisses to the judges while moving their bodies as if they were fully developed. The pageant world completely destroys their innocence. Girls have been seen dressed up as Dolly Parton wearing padding on their chest and bottom to pull of the full celebrity look.
That was a good demonstration of how sadness is inherent in life. I think much of who we are as adults has to do with how we socialize, interact and are raised as children. The first four line of the poem “Barbie Doll” speaks about the child’s innocence. “Entertaining toys such as dolls, lack certain ingredients that teach cause and effects but will have psychological effect on how a girl child interprets what is beautiful and eventually how she see herself” says Dr. Hall, a child psychoanalyst with twenty years experience (preschooler.thebump.com). The following two lines and second stanza speak of puberty and what her class mates think of her.
Feminist say that Barbie is the cause of worldwide eating disorders, low self-esteem and false perception of beauty. Girls see Barbie as a role model they set out to be like her, but researchers have recently found that her body is so disproportionate. Barbie measurements would be 38-18-34, her head would be the same size as her waist, her breast would be too large for her to walk up straight and she would be too thin to menstruate. What girl wants to grow up to be like that? Barbie’s weight is set at 110 pounds and 6ft tall but not all girls know that except when in 1965 Mattel came out with a “slumber party Barbie” that came with a bathroom scale permanently set at 110 pounds, a book called “how to lose weight” and inside it said “don’t eat”.
First debuting in 1959, Barbie has mislead girls since their youth of what society perceives the perfect woman to look like. The average girl from ages 3-11 owns at least ten Barbie dolls and each hour spent playing with them, the more influence it has on them (Bennett, Saren). Yet, this is not a positive influence. Barbie is not the perfect role model for all girls. It is bad that Barbie, a 6 foot tall, 100 pound, size 0, infertile doll is possibly believed to be realistic and perfect (Bennett, Saren).
Within the past few years the idea of the Barbie doll has been questioned by society: is Barbie what every woman is to suppose to look and act like? In Marge Piercys poem, titled “Barbie Doll” the author tells the story of girls short lived life who thought that she was normal until puberty hits and the little girl is trapped by soceitys narrow definitions of what every woman should look and act like. Through her use of irony, imagery, and symbolism Piercy voices her opnion against modern day’s view on what woman should look like. In “Barbie Doll” the main subject of the poem, a little girl, is born like any other person and is given all the things a little girl is given so that she is presented with what her role women are supposed to fill from a young age.The poem starts by teling the readers that the girl child was born “as usual” and given dolls that function like a normal baby, miniature ovens and red lipsticks. The child in the poem is treated like anormal girl growing up, until puberty hits her.
They’re learning that physical beauty is the primary judges of their character and not their brains. Child beauty pageants are wrong because it encourages sexuality at a young age, they can also create harm for that child, and they are sometimes being forced by their parents to compete. Young girls parading around a stage wearing a bikini and pounds of makeup is very wrong. The outfits that they are wearing are outfits some grown women wouldn’t even wear because it’s so inappropriate. There is a popular television show called Toddlers and Tiaras that documents what goes on during these child beauty pageants.
Many of these women and young girls were trying to emulate her look at the time, which considering her measurements of 39-18-33, was virtually impossible. A woman by the name of Cindy Jackson however has spent her entire life trying to achieve a “Barbie look,” she’s been through more than twenty operations trying to achieve this (Semansky 1). Piercy however realized that for girls of the African American, Asian, Native American, Hispanic, and any other race besides the Caucasian this would be nearly impossible. They could never look “perfect” in the eyes of the society we live in, and so she began to write this poem. The personal experiences of Piercy also contribute to the outlook on how she wrote this poem.
Child Beauty Pageants Should Be Banned When you were younger, you probably played dress up, for fun and games. Well, some irresponsible mothers in the United States are taking the concept of dressing up and turning it up several levels, and transforming their children into replicas Barbie dolls. The young pageant model is adorned with fake tans, hair extensions, 50 layers of make-up and fake teeth. After being put in extravagant, often inappropriate costumes, being fed health derogatory substances such as sugar packets and mixtures of high-energy drinks that even children twice their ages don’t even drink and performing tantrums of her reluctance to do her pageant, the juvenile Prima Donna is ready to go. Plastering on an over-exercised smile, the six year old walks on stage, cheered on by the joyful screams of her most-likely overweight mother.
But according to (Lalan Maliakal), she states that “the mothers pressurize their children to work their appearance to look like a Barbie doll.” Young Children forgo their improvement and childhood years for beauty pageants and pressure by their mothers to be the best, which for the most part is not good because the child’s virtuousness have been blemished and compress by false synthetic similes and counterfeit eyelashes and sophisticated appearance . Therefore the parents are stripping their children of being normal and not knowing how to interrelate with children their own age. As the children continue to develop their psychological mind set have altered where they feel that if they are not