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Jessica Kocan
AP Literature & Composition
Mr. Lane
November 24, 2009
“Barbie Doll” Title Analysis
Denotatively, a “Barbie doll” is a plastic toy, made by Mattel, that resembles an attractive
young woman and is very popular with adolescent girls. Connotatively, “Barbie doll” has
numerous other meanings. The words “Barbie doll” are associated with positive words such as
perfect and ideal, but also with many negative words such as fake, unnatural, and artificial. In
Marge Piercy’s poem, “Barbie Doll,” the title represents the fake perfection that is valued by
society and coveted by women.
Society has preconceived notions about what is beautiful. As girls grow up, they develop
these concepts. In the poem, lines 5-6 state, “Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: /
You have a great big nose and fat legs.” The use of the word “puberty” in these lines shows,
during adolescence, girls are often criticized and ridiculed for parts of their physical appearance
that other people (such as “classmate[s]”) do not see as beautiful or perfect. “A great big nose
and fat legs” are not attributes that one would call ideal, therefore it is not surprising that these
qualities are the cause of the young girl’s mockery and embarrassment. The criticism the girl in
the poem receives about her imperfect physical qualities shows that even at an early age, women
are concerned with their physical appearance and feel pressure from society to conform to the
fake, idealistic appearance of a Barbie doll.
Additionally, this poem displays the great value that the general public places on physical
beauty. In lines 7-9, the poem describes numerous attractive, positive, internal qualities that the
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young girl possesses. She is “healthy,” “intelligent,” and has an “abundant sexual drive and
manual dexterity.” Although the girl has all these great qualities, no one notices them.
“Everyone [only sees] a fat nose on thick legs” (11). The fact that the young girl is only known
for her physical qualities shows that society is unable to look beyond the girl’s outer appearance
and only recognizes her for her physical imperfections. Obviously, people are much more
concerned with outer, physical beauty than with inner, emotional beauty.
Society’s obsession with physical appearance causes many women to feel pressure to
conform to the ideal look. Many women, just like the girl in the poem, “exercise” and “diet” in
order to transform their bodies into ones that are more attractive and accepted by the world (14).
However, some women feel so much pressure from others that diet and exercise alone are not
enough to transform them into society’s definition of physically attractive women. These
women turn to more drastic tools of transformation, such as plastic surgery. The girl in the
poem, hoping to feel more beautiful and accepted by society, “[cuts] off her nose and her legs”
(17). This shows that our culture’s pressures cause women to covet and strive for physical
perfection, even if it is unnatural.
In the last stanza, the poem describes the girl’s funeral. Lying in her casket, the girl looks
perfect. She has “the undertaker’s cosmetics painted on,/a turned-up putty nose,/[and is] dressed
in a pink and white nightie” (20-22). This description of the young girl is very similar to the
description of a plastic, fake Barbie doll. Although the girl looks gorgeous, she is not real. “The
undertaker’s cosmetics” masks all the girl’s imperfections. Her “putty nose” is perfect, unlike
the girl’s old, big nose. And, the girl’s “pink and white nightie” is pretty and feminine, and
covers up her fat legs. Everything beautiful about the girl is fake and unnatural, but society does
not care. Everyone agrees that the girl looks gorgeous and has achieved “consummation at last”
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(24). The girl looks like a Barbie doll, and she finally satisfies society with her fake, physical
perfection.
In conclusion, the title of Marge Piercy’s poem, “Barbie Doll,” relates to the negative
connotations associated with those words. The poem contains a detailed description of one girl’s
fight to fit in to society—the ridicule she faced, her valuable qualities that were overlooked, the
efforts she made to conform, and her final achievement of perfection. Through these details, the
poem shows the great value that society places on the fake, idealistic appearance of a Barbie doll,
and the drastic changes some women make in hope of achieving this perfection.
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Works Cited
Piercy, Marge. “Barbie Doll.” Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. Ed. Thomas R.
Arp and Greg Johnson. Boston, MA: Thomas Wadsworth, 2006. 761-762.
27
Name
Topic/Title
Area
Ideas and Content
Organization
Word Choice
Sentence Fluency
Lower Order Concerns
Presentation (Research Guide)
Insight
Introduction and Conclusion
TOTAL out of 32
Date
Score
Comments
3
3
3
4
3
4
3
4
27
Comments
remember to limit your analysis to connotations of specific words, not large
chunks of text/lines; revise comments and LOCs