In today's society we seek beauty and perfection like never before. Faced with all the “beautiful” celebrities and photoshopped magazine images, women are faced with an unrealistic expectation of how they should look. If they don't have a thigh gap or a thin belly, girls feel inferior about themselves and try to change their appearance just to attract society. How many times as children were we told that inner beauty is all that matters, yet we see and live by different claims. We live in a superficial culture based on appearance. Look at all the celebrities we see. How many of them are actually talented or deserve such a high status if they didn't have the way they look? I wish I could say there was a period of time when this statement wasn't true, but you can't say, with the key example of Marge Piercy's poem, "Barbie Doll." He wrote this poem in 1973 and his message about body image can still apply to today's time period. Since the 1970s, body image has been greatly influenced by young adults. Trying to fit in and look thin has always been a big problem. The media has played a big role in this by showing what they believe it means to be beautiful. In the 1970s, curves lost popularity and the look to achieve became slim and slender. Making supermodel Twiggy a big deal; not only because of her beauty, but because of how thin she was. Making “the average model” of the time 8% thinner than the average woman. Today that figure has risen to 23%” (Derenne 259). Making the 1970s the beginning of the “me generation” – an era that saw many bouts of plastic surgery (Klein 39) in an attempt to fit into a certain model of unattainable physicality (Mulvey 165). Extremely large sums of money have been made clear that 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 was insecure and disgusted by her body because someone told her she had "fat legs and a fat nose". Then, because she failed to meet society's expectations, she "acted out" them and died, only to finally be admired and praised at her funeral. Too often a story like this is heard in newspapers or on television, because society has always had control over the lives of individuals. It tells us how to dress and behave to be accepted, and if we don't comply we will be seen as marginalized and not treated equally. This helps me understand why he wrote this poem in the first place. It's a warning about society and we clearly haven't fully grasped it if we still see issues with body image occurring.