Marge Piercy's poem "Barbie Doll" is a condemnation of the
unrealistic expectations of beauty. The doll, Barbie, was once the iconic
representation of what every woman should be. Things have changed, and the term is now
used more as a pejorative (an insult) regarding women who have overemphasized their
physical attributes at the expense of anything else--to their own
detriment.
In this poem, the speaker functions as an
impartial narrator. In fact, the tone of the poem is such that the speaker appears to
be telling us a fairy tale--a tragic and twisted fairy tale, to be sure, but a fairy
tale nevertheless. The narrator sets the tone and pattern in the first stanzas as the
speaker lists the very "normal" attributes of our heroine, known only as
"she":
This
girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and
miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry
candy.
The
narrator's tone is matter-of fact and non-judgmental, just like a narrator in a fairy
tale. That tone doesn't change when the poem takes a drastic turn in the next two
lines:
Then in
the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat
legs.
The speaker, then, is
a non-committal storyteller who shares this tragic fairy tale with us, but without
commentary.
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