Barbie Doll
...start to form cliques and the girls start to like boys and vise versa. Acceptance is one of the most important things to a child of this age. Society targets this age because they are still naïve and looking to pretty, popular, and accepted. Even though all women strive to better themselves, this is the age when the need for perfection and material things is most apparent. Rita Gross, in her essay about feminism, writes that today, “the culture is much speedier, much more materialistic, competitive, and aggressive… women participate in this mad materialistic dash completely.” (Gross 1) Therefore, it is ironic that Piery would use the term “magic”. The tone then turns to sarcasm. After this, the poem starts to take a negative turn. The hopes of the young girl are shattered when a classmate told her she had “a great big nose and fat legs”. The true, self-distructing need for perfection starts to sink in. The next stanza sets out to prove the ultimate lesson. Piercy talks about how the girl is healthy, smart, witty, and strong. By doing this, she proves that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the girl in the poem and the only thing holding her back is the stereotypes that she thinks she needs to follow. Even though she had all the qualities of a wonderful woman, because of the need for perfection, she thinks that nothing matters unless she’s beautiful. In the fourth line, of this stanza, Piercy says that “she went to and fro apologizing”. This is the natural reaction of a young girl that is insecure about herself because she thinks it’s her fault. Not only does she think it’s her fault, she thinks there is something wrong with having small imperfections in the first place. Piercy follows with “everyone saw a fat nose and thick legs”. Piercy uses the term “everyone” to make the line seem over exaggerated. By doing this, she makes the reader see that not really everyone sees her imperfections—the girl just thinks everyone does. In the third stanza, more stereotypes are enforced upon the girl. Girls of all ages can be criticized for having too much opinion and standing out too much in a crowd. Piercy states that “she was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty”. Someone might not have literally told the young girl these things, but her need for perfection told her that she needed to be this way. Because of the criticisms that she received as a young girl, she is insecure that she can’t be herself. After so long of pretending to be something she is not, she “wore out like a fan belt”. Piercy follows by saying that she “cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up”. This is a metaphor for what the young girl did. She didn’t literally cut them off. Her nose and legs symbolize who she is. By cutting them off and “offering them up” she is giving up who she really is and acting and being who society’s view of perfection says she should. Instead of just simply saying this, I believe that Piercy uses this metaphor because it is somewhat graphic and shows the intensity of the situation. By doing this, the full affect of how destructive these feelings can be is demonstrated. In the fina...