In Sandra Cisneros's "Barbie-Q", a sudden abundance of flawed Barbie dolls makes the child narrator accepts her own identity and discards society's ideals of women.…
The Poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy is about a girl who struggles with her body image. The speaker in the poem acts as an observer; watching the girl encounter different experiences as it related to her body image. Today’s generation is much similar to the life of the girl in this poem. Girls are forced to keep up with rising standards that are overwhelming and destructive. This poem uses form, imagery, and word choice to express how society chooses not to accept girls who do not represent the “ideal” woman.…
Since March 9th, 1959 the United States has had a very influential piece of plastic, called the Barbie. Barbie was created by Ruth Handler, of Mattel Inc. after discovering a doll in Germany named Bild Lilli. The Barbie doll was named after Ruth Handler’s daughter, Barbara. The Barbie was introduced to the United Sates at a time when the word “teenager” was becoming a popular trend on television and in movies. A teenager is the time between childhood and adult life. Mattel took the opportunity to release Barbie at this ideal time. It was released as a teenage fashion model. Although the Barbie was pricey, many girls loved the idea and the Barbie doll became a very popular toy. With becoming popular Barbie had a huge impact. Barbie has negatively influenced body image, stereotypical female rolls, and enforced commercialism. Although, it has modernized…
I’ll admit it; I absolutely loved playing with Barbie’s as a child! I must have had like twenty of them. She had everything: a dream house, Ken, plenty of friends, and a slender body with all the right curves, everything I dreamed of having when I grew up. “En Garde, Princess!” by Mary Grace Lord, challenges why every girl loves Barbie. Her article appeared in the online magazine Salon under the “Mothers Who Think” department on October 27, 2000, before the launch of a new doll line called the Get Real Girls, which were created by Julz Chavez. In this article Lord uses repetition, ethos, comparison and name calling to convince the reader that Barbie will soon encounter a fierce competitor, a better role model, which may finally dethrone her as the best selling doll of all time, or at least “punch a few holes in her sales” (423).…
The most important thing developing at that age is their imagination. Barbie acts as a gateway to new stories and adventures for young girls. The new clothes, shoes and gadgets provide a change of pace for them. And what little girl did not think of herself as a mother when she was dressing and feeding their Barbie doll; but I mean God forbid 5 year old girls view themselves as anything other than the “modern woman”. Parents are so quick to put their children in a box these days in order to ensure that in the future they are well adjusted to those boxes. And then when the box does not quite fit their children in the way they had hoped they panic and take to their blogs and invent the new parental craze like blaming a toy that their children does not even play with anymore to explain their poor adjusted…
Blonde hair, blue eyes, business woman, rock star, princess and doctor, can you guess who? It’s Barbie. To be beautiful is to possess qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction, and for most, Barbie is the epitome of beauty. For years Barbie has been a doll that has been living in the hands of girls of all ages. Some girls start getting Barbies as young as three years old and continue to collect these dolls sometimes into early adulthood. But are these dolls a positive influence on young girls? Barbie is harmful because she gives a false perception of beauty that effects the self esteem, health, and ethnic concerns of young girls.…
Society can take over the way people see themselves. In Marge Piercy’s poem, “Barbie Doll,” a young girl was judged for her looks and being herself. Due to this young girl’s strong mind set, she tried to stay true to herself, but could only handle so much pressure. Throughout her entire life, she was being compared to a symbolic perfect Barbie Doll who had the beautiful cosmetic fixed face that everyone imagines girls to be, and the irony of how pretty everyone thought she was on her deathbed demonstrated how the standards in society make people second guess who they really are.…
Barbie creates the cultural myth that to be beautiful women must look like her. Barbie gives the impression that everyone should look like her in order to be beautiful. This impression gives the idea for girls to accept the fact that when they grow up they will fall under the cult of domesticity. I’m not saying that all girls belong to the cult will, but it creates the idea that they might grow up to be housewives and that it is okay because Barbie sets a great example.…
The poem “Barbie Doll” is a poem concerning a young girl who has let the societal expectations that America puts on young women destroy her. The poem starts out by explaining a small female child who is just like all young girls. She had dolls and miniature ovens and lipsticks for the dolls, but when she hit puberty and her body began changing a classmate called her fat (Piercy, 687). This seems to be the beginning of all of her internal battles and self-esteem issues. The next stanza describes all the wonderful characteristics that this young woman should have been very proud of. She was a healthy intellectual who was also quite strong and skillful with her hands (Piercy, 687). The second stanza is predominantly sad to me because she possesses many of life’s more important qualities and it is a shame that she was unable to comprehend that. By my standards intelligence is a more prestigious quality to possess over beauty. The image that she owns is not incorrect in an empirical sense, but it is one that America does not accept as being the definition of the perfect woman. The girl’s human…
Society today, has changed people in the way how they act, and dress. The short story Barbie Q explains that a Barbie is the ideal woman. The Barbie is an example of what women believe to be perfect. The quote “So what if we didn’t Get our new bendable legs Barbie in nice clean boxes and had to buy them on Maxwell street all water soaked and sooty”(Cisneros). This quote means that anyone would buy a Barbie for a cheaper price because they didn’t have the money at the time and who would care if the dolls were wet or smoked. For example the barbie with the melted leg putting a dress on the doll would cover the leg. this event talks about women these days where men rate the women from very beautiful to ugly as they show in the story where the…
In the past, women were always considered the subordinate gender that was expected to powder their nose and stay at home to be a homemaker. Even now, despite the movement to liberate women from stereotypical gender roles, women are still seen as the inferior gender that is discriminated against in society. As suggested by the popular Barbie doll created by Mattel, the idealized image of a woman in our patriarchal society is one who takes care of the home and is flawlessly beautiful with perfect skin, long legs, small waist, and slender figure. The Barbie doll is used as a tool for patriarchy in that it reinforces the notion that women should be domestic workers and maintain a feminine outer appearance. Also, patriarchal values affect girls starting at a young age as they unconsciously begin to believe that Barbie is what a woman should look and be like. With the appeal and popularity of this doll for the past several years, it is difficult to alter the notions of womanhood suggested by this doll. This implies that patriarchy is something we can not permanently overthrow because it is so deeply rooted in our society.…
In the Barbie doll, the author writes about a girl’s life. The author starts off by describing her childhood. She was given dolls and toys like any other girl and she also put on some lipstick. This girl was healthy and very smart. Even though she had good things to her name she was still looked at by others as the girl with a big nose and fat legs. She exercised, went on diets and smiled as much as possible to please those around her. She became tired of pleasing everyone else and decided to commit suicide. During her funeral those who she has tried pleasing in the past were the ones to comment about how beautiful she looked. That is what she was looking for before she committed suicide.…
According to Sassatelli, consumer society refers to a society where “daily desires are satisfied through the acquisition and use of ‘commodities’, goods which are produced for exchange and are on the market…in the consumer society we not only satisfy our most elementary daily needs through commodities. We also conceptualize the purchase and use of goods as acts of ‘consumption’. Furthermore, we are accustomed to being addressed as ‘consumers’ ” (Gall, 2013: 3). Barbie was born in the 50s of the 20th century. American society became prosperous after World War II. The population of middle class gradually expanded and became the main symbol of American society (Schudson,…
Following common stereotypes, toys are given to the children according to their gender. Consequently, boys are supposed to play with a truck and girls with a doll. Toy companies design specific toys, ones for girls and other for boys. Even aisles at markets are divided by gender. One is all in pink, with Barbie’s and kitchen sets. The second one is a mixture of colors, mostly of blue and red with trucks and guns. I wonder how it would look conversely, dolls in blue clothes and pink trucks. According to Katha Pollitt article, society gives children deceptive view of the world. She states, “… to reject her is to say that what Barbie represents- being sexy, thin, stylish.” This quotation shows untruthful vision of the ideal women. A toy like Barbie negatively influences teen girls because this doll demonstrates an impossible body image. Fortunately kids are good observers and they know it is not true. Barbie and other toys can result in future psychological for the children because of the negative gender roles.…
The young girl in the story is constructing her entire identity on the ideal body of her Barbie Doll, in which her future step-mother is compared to. The line, “Barbie was sex without sex”, suggests that the girl is being inculcated with the idea that her self-worth is dependent upon her beauty as a sex object. Real girls should have many other things on their minds other than their body and sex such as school, friends, and family; but these other points are completely absent from the story. The girl explains that her new barbie was “who [she] wanted to be”, with the idealistic figure of having “torpedo breasts, the wasp waist, [and the] tall-drink-of-water-legs”. The bodies of dolls are negatively impacting young girls to make the wrong decisions regarding their bodies; this is where eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia originate. Despite the girl’s dead mother prohibiting her from having the doll given by her stepmother, she decided to take it in and let it have an influence on her instead. In addition, the girl’s future stepmother is described as having “auburn curls bouncing in the early May light…[and a] suit of fuchsia wool blooming like some exotic flower” The imagery and the simile used in this excerpt are portraying some perfect female form that’s not usually attainable. The focus on the physical features in both the doll and the stepmother strengthen the message in the young girl’s mind that her worth is proportional to her physical beauty. The story reaches the point where the desire for the idealistic female body is so strong in the young girl that it overpowers the respect she has for her dead mother’s memory, and so she accepts the new barbie doll from the stepmother. By doing this, she may be losing respect, in the long run, not only for her dead mother but also for…