The American writer Marge Piercy wrote “Barbie Doll.” Originally published in Moving Out (1971), the poem also appears in her 1982 collection, Circles on the Water. A highly descriptive poem, “Barbie Doll” offers staunch diction and vivid, stereotypical imagery of a girl who grows up and dies by suicide as an adult. This free verse poem is an example of second-wave feminist thought, also known as the Women’s Liberation Movement, something Piercy explores here through themes of objectification, gender roles, beauty ideals, and destruction.

Piercy is a well-known novelist, (e.g., He, She, and It; Woman on the Edge of Time; Gone to Soldiers; The Longings of Women), a poet, (e.g., The Moon is Always Female, Circles on the Water, Art of Blessing the Day, Made in Detroit), and as a political activist and feminist. Her work is Postmodernist, with her use of free formats, themes which challenge authority, and subjects which address political issues. The greatest influence on her work is notably her involvement in the second-wave feminist movement, also known as the Women’s Liberation Movement, which took place roughly between the 1960s and 1980s. Second-wave feminism focused on critiquing and bringing light to issues like sexuality, reproductive rights, and legal inequalities, among a broad range of other issues. Piercy’s work, particularly of that era, focuses heavily on such issues and put her in conversation with other feminist writers of her time, such as Adrienne Rich, whose essays discuss sexuality and politics, and Muriel Rukeyser, whose poems explore many of the same topics of feminism and equality.

“Barbie Doll” is a relatively early poem from Piercy’s seven-decade long history of written work and shows the key elements of Piercy’s mindset and style from this period of her life. Circles on the Water, containing select poems written by Piercy from 1963-1982, address a broad range of topics, from cats, to feminism, to the moon, to death—but, as Piercy writes in the introduction to Circles on the Water: “I have to confess, for me it is all one vision” (Page 14). She ceaselessly criticizes the gender roles placed on women and examines the relationship between sexuality, nature, and the body, themes which are of particular prominence in “Barbie Doll.

Poet Biography

Marge Piercy was born March 31st, 1936 in Detroit, Michigan, to a working-class family affected by the Depression. Her father, Robert Douglas Piercy, was born in the soft coal mining region of Pennsylvania; and her mother, Bert Bernice Bunnin, was born in Philadelphia. Robert had been out of work for some time when he got a job installing and repairing machinery with Westinghouse. They lived in a small house in Detroit, in a working-class neighborhood. Her father was non-religious and Presbyterian in background, but her mother and maternal grandmother were Jewish and raised her as such, giving Piercy her Hebrew name, Marah.

Piercy left home at 17. She won a scholarship to the University of Michigan which paid her tuition, making her the first person in her family to attend college. In 1957, her senior year, she won a Hopwood award, which meant that she did not need to work to support herself and allowed her to travel to France once she graduated. She moved on to complete a Master of Arts from Northwestern in 1958, where she held a fellowship.

She traveled to France with her first husband, a French and Jewish particle physicist. He was ultimately unsupportive of Piercy’s writing, and at the age of 23, Piercy left him. She lived in Chicago on her own and supported herself through a variety of part-time jobs: as a department store clerk, a secretary, a switchboard operator, a part-time faculty instructor, and others. At this time, Piercy was writing novels and poetry but was unsuccessful in having them published.

In 1962, she married her second husband, Robert Shapiro, a computer scientist. Together they moved to Cambridge, followed by San Francisco, and then to Boston, where Piercy became involved with SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. She continued to write but was mainly focused on political organizing. They moved to Brooklyn in 1965, where her political involvement increased; she became an organizer with the SDS regional office in New York. By 1971, the pair had moved to Cape Cod, and by 1976, Robert Shapiro and Marge Piercy divorced.

Marge Piercy married her third and current husband, Ira Wood, in 1982. They wrote a play together titled The Last White Class, as well as a novel titled Storm Tide. In 1997, they founded a small literary publishing company called the Leapfrog Press. They currently reside in Wellfleet, MA, where they live in a home designed by Piercy.

Poem Text

Piercy, Marge. “Barbie Doll.” 1971. Poem Hunter.

Summary

Piercy opens by announcing the normal birth of a baby girl: “This girlchild was born as usual” (Line 1). The poet then moves to a series of images depicting the child being presented with toys, which include “dolls that did pee-pee,” “miniature GE stoves and irons,” and “wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy” (Lines 2-4). In Lines 5-6, the girl has grown to reach puberty, wherein a classmate tells her that she has “a great big nose and fat legs.”

In the second stanza, the poem shifts to describing the girl’s physical and mental strengths. She is “healthy” and tests “intelligent” (Line 7), possesses “strong arms and back” (Lines 7-8), and has developed a sex drive and “manual dexterity” (Line 9).

The poem moves to the image of her going “to and fro apologizing” (Line 10) with everyone who sees “a fat nose on thick legs” (Line 11).

In the fourth stanza, the poet details conflicting advice given to the girl, telling her to “play coy” and “come on hearty” (Lines 12-13). She’s exhorted to “exercise, diet, smile and wheedle” (Line 14). This wears her good nature out “like a fan belt” (Line 16), and she ultimately cuts off “her nose and her legs” and offers them up (Lines 17-18).

In the fifth and final stanza, the girl, who has now passed away from her injuries, lies “in the casket displayed on satin” (Line 19). She has had makeup posthumously applied and was even given a new nose: “with the undertaker’s cosmetics painted on, / [and] a turned-up putty nose” (Lines 20-21). The character has been put in a “pink and white nightie” (Line 22) and is finally seen by the others as beautiful: “Doesn’t she look pretty?” (Line 23). Line 24 says, “consummation at last,” telling us that she has been completed or finalized. This is her “happy ending” (Line 25).