Perfect Imagine you are a young girl. It is your first day at a new school. You have chosen the perfect outfit; your hair is immaculate; and your make-up is flawless… so you think. Fast forward to lunchtime and you find yourself sitting at a table for eight with a party of one. You are an outcast. Alone. Crushed. Social acceptance can mean everything to a person. And some people will do anything to feel accepted. In Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll”, the use of imagery and metaphor help create the theme that society’s pressure on young girls (and boys) to be perfect can lead to extreme endings. “Barbie Doll” begins with a young, ordinary “girlchild” (Line 1) innocently playing with her Barbie doll. The girl grows to be of puberty age, at a time when a girl’s emotions are very fragile, and is the subject of criticism from one of her peers. She states, “You have a great big nose and fat legs” (line 6). The girlchild is described as being a normal girl. “She was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back…” (Line 7-8) but the ridicule has a profound impact on the young girl. “Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.” (Line 11) shows how the girl thinks everyone perceives her. Piercy uses imagery in lines 12 through 14 to describe how the girl lets this pressure of society’s opinion begin to change her self-image. “She was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.” Exhorted and wheedle are synonyms for influenced or persuasion as stated. The young girl is being persuaded by her peers to think that she needs to change her looks and how she acts. She begins to diet and exercise in hopes of achieving that perfect Barbie doll figure. She acts coy and smiles to appear charming and ladylike. She charades her true self to her peers in hopes of being accepted. Piercy has begun to establish the burden that the girl feels to keep up this perfect appearance.
In lines 15 through 18, Piercy uses simile and imagery to illustrate the young girl’s breaking point and the extreme measure she uses to escape from the pressure she has felt to maintain the perfect persona. “Her good nature wore out like a fan belt. So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up.” (Lines 15-18) The fan belt is a representation of the girl’s will power. A fan belt does not wear easily. It is something that happens over a long period of time. The girl has kept up her charade for quite some time. The amount of lying and fakeness has become a heavy burden for her to bear. And eventually like the belt, her good intentions wear out. Snap! “So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up” (Line 17-18) is the imagery of her suicide. The constant need to keep up the disguises of being this perfect person has left her feeling desperate. The only way to be free from the lies is to sacrifice the source of the lies. In this case, it is the girl. Piercy achieves the feeling of desperation and turmoil in this stanza to reinforce the theme that when pressured it will lead to extreme measures. “In the casket displayed on satin she lay… Doesn’t she look pretty? Everyone said. (Lines 19/23). Here Piercy uses a metaphor to describe the disgusting toll that social acceptance can have on a person. The casket is the metaphor of the girl’s Barbie doll packaging that is on display as if she was on a Wal-Mart shelf. The satin represents regal-ness and perfection since satin used to be the most perfect fabric reserved for only royalty. She is also described, “dressed in a pink and white nightie” (line 22). When you think of Barbie you think of pink and white. This enhances the image of the dead girl metamorphoses into a Barbie doll. Only at her death, as she is lying in her coffin, masked, morphed, and painted does she finally receive the approval from her peers. The tragedy of these two lines shows the power that peer pressure can have on a person’s life. Piercy ends the poem, “Consummation at last. To every woman a happy ending” (line 24-25). The irony of the happy ending shows that though girls may go to severe measures but can still be happy in the pursuit of achieving an unobtainable goal. Unfortunately this story hits home to everyone. We are constantly inundated with pressure to be a size zero or to have muscles has big as a melon. Piercy use of imagery, simile, and metaphors brings this reality to the forefront.

Works Cited
Piercy, Marge. “Barbie Doll.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. 10th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. 476-7. Print.