In today's society, beauty and perfection are sought after like never before. Faced with all the “beautiful” celebrities and photoshopped magazine photos, women are faced with unrealistic expectations about their appearance. If they don't have a thigh gap or a skinny stomach, girls feel inadequate and try to change their appearance just to please society. How many times we were told as children that inner beauty is all that matters, and yet we see and live by different statements. We live in a superficial culture based on appearance. Look at all the celebrities we see. How many of them actually have talent or would be worth such high status if they didn't have their looks? I wish I could say that there was a time when this statement wasn't true, but it can't be said, the key example being Marge Piercy's poem, "Barbie Doll." She wrote this poem in 1973 and its message about body image can still be applied to today's times. Since the 1970s, body image has been heavily influenced by young adults. Trying to fit in and look skinny has always been a big problem. The media has played an important role in showing what they believe it means to be beautiful. In the 70s, curves lost popularity and the look to achieve was increasingly slimmer. Making the Twiggy model a big deal; not only because of her beauty, but also because of her thinness. Which made “the average model” at the time 8% thinner than the average woman. Today, this figure rises to 23%” (Derenne 259). Which makes the 1970s the beginning of the “me generation” – an era that saw many resorting to plastic surgery (Klein 39) in an attempt to fit a certain mold of inaccessible physicality (Mulvey 165). Extremely large amounts of money were spent middle of paper...... as her particular poem "Barbie Doll" was written in the midst of a feminist movement in America that redefined the lives of many women. It tells the story of a young girl who is insecure and disgusted with her body because someone told her she had “fat legs and a big nose.” So, because she failed to live up to society's expectations, she "cut them off" and died, only to be admired and praised at her funeral. We hear such a story too often in the newspapers or on television, because society has always had a hold on the lives of individuals. It tells us how to dress and act to be accepted, and if we don't conform, we are considered outcasts and not treated the same. This helps me understand why she wrote this poem in the first place. This is a warning to society and it is clear that we have not fully realized this if we still see body image issues..