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Marge Piercy, "Barbie Doll"

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Barbie® and Her Times

This is the official Web site of Mattel Toys with a list of every item the company makes. Look at the list of toys under the headings for girls and boys. Choose a few under each heading. What attitude or behavior does each toy encourage? How could that lead, even in a minor way, to the attitudes and self-concept expressed in the poem "Barbie Doll"?

Barbie® first appeared in the mid-fifties. You may wonder what it was like growing up, whether female or male, in that era. Read this anonymous personal view of growing up female in the fifties from the Chicago Women's Liberation Union's Herstory project. Listen to an audio interview with Marge Piercy about what it was like to grow up in Detroit. She also talks about the differences in growing up during the fifties and sixties and about the drug culture. She brings up issues of feminism. How do you think growing up in the eighties and nineties, either female or male, is similar to and different from growing up in the fifties and sixties?

Body Image and Peer Pressure

Girls and young women often have a negative view of their appearance, often based on a minor flaw. These two short articles, "What is Body Image" and "Dying to Fit In," explain the problem and the effect on young women who try to attain the impossible ideal. This article about body dismorphic disorder (BDD) showcases some extreme cases of what young women can do to themselves. The Berkeley Parents network offers young women information about the reality, or unreality, of the perfect body. Peer pressure strongly influences young women's lives. The media also influence a young woman's opinion of her body, as this article suggests.

Many young American women try to attain an impossible body. What does a real young woman look like? How different is that from the image projected by the media and by peers? How can a young woman protect herself from becoming a victim of either a false body image or the more severe BBD?

Poems

Here are two poems from Piercy's book of poetry, Early Grrrl. "What are big girls made of?" is one of her most popular poems (you can hear and see her read the poem if you prefer), as is "To Have Without Holding." Read any one of these four poems and compare it to "Barbie Doll." Does the poem add anything more to the picture of the culture than does "Barbie Doll"? Explain your opinion with lines from the poems.

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