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.
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 out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up.
In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with 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.
Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” is 25 line free verse poem railing at the conventions of image society imposes on women. Rich in acrimony, irony and clinical in its mood, this poem sets out to present an example of an everyday girl growing up with the social construct of false expectations. By drawing from simple everyday kinds of experiences and using straightforward language, the poet exposes the contradictions and injustices hiding in the cracks of ordinary interactions for many women.
The first stanza jumps right in with the stock imagery of the classic young girl with the homemaker material of “dolls” “GE Stoves and irons” and “wee lipstick.” (Pierce 2-4) This, of course is bequeathed to her in customary toy form, thus setting her up to understand what are the correct and right objects for her gender. It should be hard for the reader to miss the mocking, cynical critique the poet adds by the close proximation of the assonances “pee”, “GE”, “wee” and “candy.” (204) Such a rhyming practice is found occasionally throughout the poem, heightening the tension and criticism.
The following stanza opens with the irony of the girl being told she is too big. Despite being healthy, smart, strong, and otherwise full of life, (7-9) she is accused of simply being the wrong size; as if that was the only metric of value. Even though she has played with the socially acceptable dolls for her predetermined identity, this girl still fails by the ever exacting conditions of society’s idea of female beauty. She rushes around from encounter to encounter “apologizing” (9) for the state that she should never have to explain away in the first place.
But she is in luck! Her betters, in stanza six, design to help her through with guidance and suggestion for losing weight and fitting in through subservient sweet talking. This imagery of kowtowing to the submissive attitude that females should engender contrasts sharply with the previous description of this girl’s actual strength. The poet takes advantage of this dichotomy in the following two lines by sharply wording the girls feeling in some of the briefest lines of the poem. “Her good nature wore out / like a fan belt.” (15-16) If a free verse poem could be said to have a turn like a sonnet does, this could be considered such a device. No longer is the girl trying to fit in and play ‘nice’ through the words the poet chooses. The lie is exposed. It is here the poet calls out the hypocrisy for what it is by allowing the character to outwardly express her frustration to which she had previously tried to accommodate.
At this point the girl’s (and the poet’s) rage is in full splendor, in a violent and ironic display of her ‘offending’ parts removed and presented as the clearest evidence of society’s hypocrisy. (17-18) These lines are an extension of the previous two in their curtness, imagery and use of an automobile as symbol of an object that can be judged in purely quantifiable terms. Is she more beautiful without this “fat nose on thick legs”? (11)
Ironically, society find it so, and only so when she lies dead in her casket with embalmers makeup on and sexualized gender appropriate attire. Here the ‘barbie girl’ is complete in all it’s lifeless plastic phony glory. The girl’s demise is a full explosion of irony in that she is only able to find acceptance through the falsest of pretensions. The poet’s brief exploration of image, beauty, society and hypocrisy finds its sarcastic finish in death where a women can only truly find real acceptance in the bed of a coffin. The poem comes full circle with the two end caps of human existence, each painted by society’s pained efforts to force, mold and create something that is not there, in the saddest of realities that this process destroys the beauty that was always there in the first place.