Gender Identity in Marge Piecys Barbie Doll

Gender Identity in Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” Dolls often give children their first lessons in what a society considers valuable and beautiful. These dolls often reveal the unremitting pressure to be young, slim, and beautiful in a society which values mainly aesthetics. Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” exhibits how a girl’s childhood is saturated with gender-defined roles and preconceived norms for how one should behave. In order to convey her thoughts, the author uses …

…act is the goal of society to change its inhabitants into “Barbie Dolls.” It wasn’t until the girl/subject was dead that anyone considered her pretty, and even then it was not actually her who they were looking at; rather, it was a generated character. Line twenty-five works with the previous line to evoke feelings of pity and reconciliation within the reader as they contemplate the severity of the pressures that society can produce.