Today’s society has created its own perception of beauty and it is mainly based off of what one can only see on the outside. However, it has been this way for more than what many people of today’s society would imagine. From a very young age, many girls are taught to believe that to be accepted under today’s idea of beauty you have to be almost identical to a Barbie doll. For roughly five decades children have played with or at least seen a Barbie therefore almost everyone knows how perfect a Barbie doll may seem. In recent years, the image of what a female should do and look like has become disgusting and constantly destroying girls’ self-esteem starting at very young ages. In the poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy, she demonstrates the ugly truth about how terrible the perception of beauty can make a girl who doesn’t meet the standard of beauty feel. In this poem Piercy tells readers about a girl who grows up playing like most other girls until she hits the age where girls and boys notice the difference in each other’s beauty and eventually the girl commits suicide because she was destroyed on the inside by hurtful remarks just because her outward appearance wasn’t good enough. In the first stanza of the poem, specifically lines 1-4, Piercy explains how a “girlchild” (Piercy, 1) was born as every girlchild is usually born, plays with toys you would expect a young girl to play with, and does what most young girls do. However, a reader might notice how Piercy included toys that almost every little girl plays with, but one might not notice how all the toys are miniature versions of objects adult women are accompanied by; “miniature GE stoves and irons” (Piercy, 3) and “wee lipsticks” (Piercy, 4). The toys that a reader might assume the child’s parents bought her symbolize feminism because they show what kind of lady the mother wants her child to grow up to be like. Readers may assume that the mother of the child wants her to grow up like every other woman and bake and care for children. Piercy might hav