Barbie Doll

"So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up." - Marge Piercy

As a young woman living in a society that puts pressures on girls to act a particular way and look a particular way, I can totally relate to the uneasiness felt by the "girlchild" in this poem.  Sometimes girls can be very mean and cruel and if one doesn't totally fit into the category of what a typical girl should look like, life can be hard.  One literary technique I noticed immediately about this poem is the hyperbole expressed in the quote above.  I believe the girl killed herself because she felt very bad about her appearance.  She did not literally cut off her nose and legs and offer them up.  The purpose of this literary device is to express to the reader that the girl's dissatisfaction with how she looked and how people viewed her led to her demise.  I think it is awful that some women go on living life worrying about things like this.  Everyone is beautiful in their own way and us girls need to stop reinforcing these opinions about appearances along with ending our own desires to be like what most people describe as a beautiful.  Beauty shouldn't be measured from what we look like on the outside.  It should be measured on how we act from the inside. (<--- Sorry this seams like such a cliche!!)