Barbie dolls are one of the best selling toys of all time. Marge Piercy relates to the girl in “Barbie Doll.” Piercy hides her rage with society’s pressure on women to look a certain way in “Barbie Doll,” in an ironic way. “Barbie Doll,” has four stanzas, each one progresses and changes the tone as the girl grows and changes. The poem opens up with a “girlchild” being born. The poem begins like a fairy-tale, using words such as, “girlchild” in order to emphasize the fictitious quality of the story.
By only handing a girl pink playthings for the first three years of her life, she may decide pink is her favorite color because “that’s what girls like.” In fact, researchers think that parents and other social factors lead children to prefer gender-specific toys. Some of these things, like the Disney princesses and all the princess culture related, seemed innocent and protective. But maybe it's not. Parents need to have more context about girls' culture to understand the decisions they're making and make them so that they'll be in concert with their values. A 2009 study found that 31 per cent of “girl” toys are all about appearance, involving plastic makeup and dresses.
History of American Women HIS 204 American History Since 1865 Instructor: History of American Women Throughout most of history women in general have had fewer legal rights and career opportunities than men. Women were long considered much weaker than men, and incapable of performing work requiring muscular or intellectual development. However, when they were giving the opportunity for personal and intellectual freedom, women made significant achievements. Although a woman’s typical life path during this era was marriage and family, women began to see an increase in employment opportunities in society, because of war there was no longer so much discrimination against women. During the early part of the 19th century
Smiley’s first Barbie doll came into her home when her now twenty-four year old daughter was three. The author describes how both of her daughters would only wear pink and purple as they went through the “Barbie phase.” Jane Smiley says, “Both of them (her daughters) learned how to put on makeup before kindergarten” (376). What Smiley means by this is that her daughters were advanced in age mentally. Smiley’s daughters were doing things at age five that most girls would only start doing at the beginning of their teenage years. Now that’s growing up without a childhood.
In “Barbie Dream House,” there are 3 Caucasians, 1 African, and 1 that doesn’t show her face. One of the blonde girls is the main character because she gets to play with the doll house first while everyone in the background are non Caucasians. The blonde girl gets all the attention. As a leader of the commercial she gets to play with the doll. We need to be aware of what’s taking place in children programming’s.
“Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: you have a great big nose and fat legs” (5-6) altering anything and everything this little girl ever knew to be true about herself. One comment ruined her entire view of herself and other girls, that she had to be like them since they did not like who she was born being. The “Beauty Myth” by Naomi Wolf states things like, “The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us... During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty...” all of this saying that the stress put on
In the poem, the speaker states the girlchild has “wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy” (4), showing that she already wants to alter her appearance. As children grow into young adults, they become aware of outside judgments; as the girlchild was made aware in the poem. “Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:/ You have a great big nose and fat legs” (5-6). Girls are pressured into looking the way media portrays beauty. Unfortunately, outward appearances take on a more important role than other characteristics to teenage girls.
Piercy analyzes the girl from birth and uses a detached, expecting tone to portray her normality. In lines two through five Piercy creates a bitter tone when talking about the toys her parents presented her as a child. Piercy's tone can also seem as if she is disgusted because she talks about the “dolls that did pee pee” and uses a sarcastic alliteration when she said “lipsticks the color of cherry candy” (2-4). At this point it is clear the child is a toddler or in adolescence since she plays with these toys that little girls are expected to pay with at that age. The first stanza abruptly ends with “You have a great big nose and fat legs.” (6).
The Woman of Willendorf may have been looked up to back in Common Era due to her capabilities. Her "womanly features" emphasized to show that she was respected because of what she has naturally, and her ability to reproduce. Barbie, on the other hand, is highly superficial. People look up to her now because she is beautiful, and is successful within her career as she has evolved to become other beings such as Barbie Police and Barbie Doctor. But the biggest difference with her is that achieving her looks may be highly unlikely.
In the 20th century, women in most nations won the right to vote, this in return increased their educational and job opportunities. Which is a good thing compared to tests that were done in the 1960s that showed that women’s scholastic achievement were higher in early grades than in high school because the teachers and families of girls did not expect them to peruse anything but being a wife and mother (wic.org). I would say that that we have come a long way from the early 20th century. Women in positions of power or women who want to work their way to a position of power still tend to have a glass ceiling over them. This is because history tells us that men hold these types of positions women are gaining and proving that they can do just as well as a man in a position of power.