Barbie Doll
By: Marge Piercy

This poem was actually very depressing, in my opinion.  The girl that the poem is about was a normal, happy little girl as a child.  However, when puberty hit, a classmate told her that she had a big nose and fat legs.  Regardless of what she did and accomplished, this is all anyone would notice.  No one could see past her fat legs and big nose.  Eventually, the girl could not handle the stress of everyone's harsh judgments.  "Her good nature wore out like a fan belt" (Piercy).  This simile bears a great significance to the poem.  I had to look up what a fan belt was to understand the simile to realize this, though.  A fan belt keeps a car's engine from overheating.  If it runs out, then the engine would no longer work.  Similarly, the young girl grew tired of people judging her.  Her good nature refers to her self-confidence and motivation to ignore people's rude opinions.  She grew angry towards everyone and did not want to have to deal with the situation any longer.  As a result, she cut off her nose and legs.  The narrator describes that in her casket, she had a "turned-up putty nose, dressed in a pink and white nightie" (Piercy).  When everyone viewed her casket, they commented on how pretty she looked.  This was sad to me.  No one would recognize the girl's true and natural beauty.  They only saw her to be beautiful when she had a fake nose and no legs in her casket.  The final lines say "consummation at last.  To every woman a happy ending" (Piercy).  I thought that this quote was a shame.  It is basically saying that no woman ever feels happy until she is told that she is pretty.  Since no one said this about the girl until she was dead, I found this quote to be especially upsetting.