Formal Essay #2

November 25, 2012

Dear Mr. Smith,

Both Men and Women are objectified on a daily basis through advertising, music and by the harassment of other peers. When a human is put on a pedestal and called the epitome of beauty and others are forced to live up to it, what happens if they cant? Take the children’s toy the Barbie Doll for instance, she and her boyfriend Ken are considered the best looking and all her friends look skinny and appealing. This sort of depiction in toys is exactly what happens in today’s society, if you are not “hot” or “sexy” you are not considered popular and are shunned out. Marge Piercy is a renowned poet and depicts this cruelty in her poem titled “Barbie Doll”.

The title “Barbie Doll” is very controversial; a Barbie doll symbolized being perfect and the epitome of beauty. Most little girls grow up playing with Barbie dolls that come with their fancy car, house, friends, cloths and sometimes even her boyfriend Ken. Society loves the sexy tall, tan, long blonde and blue-eyed girls that resemble the plastic sensation: The Barbie Doll. When these girls grow up and they do not resemble the Barbie doll or the celebrity on the cover of Maxim Magazine, then they are harassed and made fun of because they are not able to succumb to societies norms.

In the first stanza of this poem “Barbie Doll” Piercy explains how a girl was born like every other baby; cute and innocent but as time went on through her childhood, she changed.

“This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.”(Piercy)

When a child goes through puberty they change physically and mentally whether they like it or not. This poor girl endures the “magic” but all she receives is a big nose and fat legs. This stanza is a great because it gives a look at how a child begins to receive harsh criticism. This means if after the magic of puberty either boys or girls end up not looking perfect, then they receive rude comments and criticism.

           

 In the second stanza, the author lets the reader know that this girl has the same physical qualities like being strong, healthy and intelligent. People do not realize that a person’s true beauty is inside not on the outside. Intelligence and love are more important then any looks but Piercy depicts how so many people don’t think like this. Piercy says, “Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs”(Piercy). This is an example of such behavior; kids and adults can be so fixated on the external build and lose sigh of the qualities such as honesty and intelligence.  

 

Stanza three starts off by the poet saying, “She was advised to play coy”. This means that this young girl is advised to be shy and try to deflect any sort of comments about her physical appearance. She is told to “exercise, diet, smile and wheedle”. According to societies norms, you will look attractive if you do all of these things. When the poet says that she is supposed to diet and exercise it makes this girl sound like she is a bigger girl and has fat legs. “Her good nature wore out, like a fan belt” implies that all the time that she has been acting coy, smiling and hiding her true self ran its course. She has tried to hide from society so she would not feel the hurt from her peers put-downs. The hurt and sorrow of all of the criticism that she has received has thrown her off track; like a fan belt in a car. So in anger against the world, “she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up”. This is a surreal analogy of the truth about how people are supposed to live up to societies harsh standards just to be considered “hot or beautiful”. This innocent girl feels so self-conscious that she thinks it is necessary to cut off her legs and nose just to look like a Barbie doll! This is a real life analogy of how people get use Botox and get plastic surgery so they will look like the drop dead gorgeous Barbie Doll. What has this world come to?

In the last stanza, Piercy overwhelms you with the message of this poem and todays society.

“In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending.” (Piercy)

This stanza is very heart wrenching because this girl is now metaphorically dead because of what she has done to herself. She makes you imagine this innocent girl in which god put into the wrong body. She depicts it as if the devil has taken over her judgment and killed her. Then Piercy says she has “ the undertakers cosmetics painted on” this is a very powerful statement because the undertaker is referring to the devil and bad judgment. Piercy is saying that this girl killed herself so she would have the opportunity to wear the makeup to make her look acceptable to society. The tuned up nose refers to someone who just had surgery to perfect his or her appearance. The tuned up nose, perfect makeup and white nighty, now she is ready for the world to see her: at her funeral. Dressed in her new nightgown perfect and angelic looking, “doesn’t she look pretty?” lying down in her casket symbolizing the end of her life, now looking perfect, “consummation at last”. Now she looks perfect- perfectly fake. Marge Piercy has let us know that in today’s society being fake is the new perfect woman. 

“To every woman a happy ending.” is the perfect summation to the objectification of both genders in today’s society. Sexy men and women are always going to achieve things solely based on their appearances. Marge Piercy pinpoints how people are so cruel and degrade others if they cannot become something that they are not. What has our society come to?

Sincerely

Shawn V

Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

The topic of my second formal paper is using the material that we have learned in class about men and women being objectified through advertising and music. We also learned how men are supposed to follow a certain set of rules called the “Guy Code” just so they don’t lose their masculinity. I am using all of this to talk about how men an women are can be bullied if they do not live up to societies norms.

Piercy, Marge. “Barbie Doll”. Poem. 1999. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/barbie-doll/

In this poem, Marge Piercy depicts the harsh norms that girls and women are forced to live up to in today’s society. I am using this poem in my essay because I want to talk about how women are forced to supposedly look HOT or else no one will like, date, befriend, or show any attention. In the poem the girl is told that she has fat legs and a big nose. From what her classmates told her, she contemplates her image. She metaphorically cuts her thighs and nose off so she will prove to herself and everyone at her school that she is good looking. At the end of the poem she is laying in her coffin at her funeral they say, “Doesn’t she look pretty’ everyone said, consummation at last”. I hope to use this as pathos in my essay to link peoples emotion to my topic.

"Teenage Bullying." - Bullying Statistics. N.p., 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2012. <http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/teenage-bullying.html>.

            To help my argument I am choosing to use good evidence of bullying that can occur in schools, workplaces and other places. There are three types of bulling- verbal, physical and cyber. Approximately 30 percent of teens are either bullied or have bullied others. This bullying leads to self-esteem issues, stress and sometimes even death. Bullying can be linked to the reasons why people act the way the do later in life. But most importantly for this essay the bullying that the girl received in the poem "Barbie Doll" took that criticism seriously and took her own life. Bullying is another way men and women are objectified in today's society. They may not be sex objects like in magazines or commercials but they are compared to them.

Proposal

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Topic: In my paper about how women are pressured to meet societies harsh norms I will compare what I have noticed through out high school to the poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy.

Exigence/ Intended Audience: I am writing this to inform everyone about how some women, teens and girls starve themselves, and will plaster on make-up to try to live up to the American so-called beauty.

Purpose: I hope that by writing this people will realize how harsh of a role society plays on women and the pressure in which they need to conform to feel beautiful.

Claim: With magazines, songs, media and harsh norms women feel the need to try to conform to them and this is depicted in Marge Piercy’s poem “Barbie Doll”.

Writers Strategy #1: Exemplification: I will use this to show cases of how women try to conform to societies norms. For example, women starving themselves, wishing to be someone that they are not and wearing cloths that they think make them look good. Teens do this so they can fit into certain cool cliques and crowds.

Writers Strategy #2: Description: I am going to compare this epidemic to Marge Piercy’s poem “Barbie Doll” where she writes about a girl conforming to the every so perfect Barbie doll and ends up cutting off her ugly nose and fat thighs and ended up in a casket and the last line is “’Doesn’t she look pretty’ everyone said, consummation at last”.

Writers Stategy #3:Logos: I plan on using facts to help explain how girls are doing whatever it takes to so called look beautiful in the eyes of the popular people- even though it may kill you.

Writers Effect #1: I hope by using Exemplification I can use specific examples to try to tie my topic to the readers heart and use their own experiences to realize my point.

Writers Effect #2: I hope by using Description I can use Piercy’s poem to give a semi-graphic example to realy drive my point home with the poignant poem that sadly depicts the life of many teens in America.

Writers Effect #3: Logos is always good to use in an essay because when you are trying to express a point facts and logic are always needed to connect with your readers.

Response: I realy love this poem because we realy talked about it in depth in my English 1A class and it ties in with this assighnmetn very wall and want to use it to compliment my topic of how women feel obligated to conform to socities harch norms.

Link to the poem   http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/barbie-doll/

RA#3 Kimmel

Title: “Bros Before Hos”: The Guy code Author: Michael Kimmel Topic: To explain how guys operate and to explain the rules guys use to maintain their reputation and not become a mammas boy. Exigence: To make it aware to others what young men do to themselves just so they seem cool. Intended Audience: Other teens and Adults. Purpose: To try and explain what steps are in this process to maintain their reputation. Claim: Men are to wound up in their own reputation and how obvious their masculinity is so they are not deemed a mamas boy. Writers Strategy #1: Kimmel uses Exemplification in his essay to help depict the effects of the Guy Code. When Kimmel is talking about how a young boy and his father are in a barbershop and some styling chemicals burn his scalp he starts to cry, the barber says, “This boy’s a wimp”(615). With this description you get a feeling as to how harsh men are to other men or should I say boys because this child was only three and a half. Writers Effect #1: This example is one of many that make an impression on you and make you think about how guys try to make others not wimps or mammas boys. The father of this boy later tells his mother that she can not spend much time with her own son after that point because she was emasculating him. Writers Strategy #2: Kimmel uses Definition to spell out the actual “Real Guy’s Top Ten List”. The list consists of things like: “Boys Don’t Cry”, “Take It Like A Man”, “Size Matters” and “Nice Guys Finish Last”. He says that all ten of these rules make a guy who he is and if they cant live up to them then they are less masculine. Writers Effect #2: By reading this list of rules it makes me glad that I am not like these other guys who lives up to such stupid rules. Some of them are true like “Take it like a man” but the others are for guys fighting to be considered the most masculine. Writers Strategy #3: Kimmel uses Compare and Contrast to draw the line between masculinity and femininity. Basically if you are not following the list of ten guy rules, are a mommas boy, a sissy, gay or any other combination you then you not a masculine man and more like a girl. Writers Effect #3: Before I read this article I never thought that men and women were separated solely on what was being described in Kimmel’s essay.
 Response: I enjoyed this essay because it gave me a new perspective on the way that I view men, women, children and the actions that separate them all. I also think that there is a certain amount of bias in how people think that men and boys act to make them masculine. I personally think that spending time with your mother or being raised by your mother emasculates you. Kimmel mentioned the rapper Eminem and referred to him as being masculine but little did Kimmel know his mother raised him.