The poem “Barbie Doll” has many literary devices in it. This poem is in one way very straight forward but if you take it apart and research it you can dig down deeper and the meaning gets deeper. One of the first things I notice is that when she says the “magic of puberty” that she is definitely using irony. Every girl knows that when you go through puberty it is not magic or a joy to go through. She also uses a simile near the end to say that she was “wore out like a fan belt”. Because fan belt are on cars so that was used to compare her that she could not go on any longer with her tough diet and exercise routine. At the end of the poem when she has literally exercised and dieted and had surgery till death, the last words are “happy ending”. When she says that I see that as complete satire because obviously it is not a happy ending because she is dead and maybe she says that she is happy because she doesn’t have to work to look “perfect” anymore and now she can rest in peace. As I looked up definitions for a Barbie Doll they all came up by them saying that it is something that is fake, that is perfect, something can could never be real life. I also read a statistic one time a long time ago that said if Barbie was a real person and had the same measurements of their waste, hips and breast that they would fall over because their tiny waste would not be able to hold their big breast up. Therefore a Barbie Doll can never be real and someone should never strive to be like a Barbie. This poem is a result of someone who did and they ended up in the casket with a “turned up putty nose” because of her plastic surgery. So I think the overall meaning to this poem is do not try to please other people by the way that you look. Because when you try and please other people you don’t please yourself and you can end up dead just like she did.
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