Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll" is a poem which uses the idea of the Barbie Doll in its positive and negative aspects to develop a theme related to a real woman in the real world. The Barbie Doll is used both as an ideal and as an impossible goal, and the theme reiterates the idea that women are expected in this society to live up to this impossible ideal. Women are thus made to feel that they are failures when they do not achieve that level of perfection, a level unrealistic in its demands and met only by a tiny percentage of women. The theme is developed in four stanzas. The subject is a "girlchild" like every other girl child--she was "born as usual" (1). As she grows up, she is treated as every other girl child is treated--given the same toys, raised with the same expectations, and presumably loved by her parents for herself. It is only when she leaves the warmth and separateness of the playroom that she encounters a new attitude, and the fact that this attitude takes place outside the home emphasizes that it is a societal attitude which is then imposed on the girl, no longer a girl child but a girl in school:
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