In Sandra Cisneros’s “Barbie-Q,” a child’s fascination of flawed Barbie dolls makes the narrator accept her own identity by disposing the society’s ideals of women. Barbie is the tall, skinny, blonde, fair-skinned, beautiful, successful, and fun fictional character that every young girl wants to be growing up. Barbie has a perfect body, the ultimate wardrobe, and can live a high-class life of fun. The narrator opens the short story by introducing the Barbies with which the two girls are playing. They are old and worn out, but the girls’ parents do not have enough money to buy new ones. This is why the girls are so excited to find some for sale at the flea market. Each of these Barbies has some unique flaw due to a toy warehouse on Halsted Street burning down. Cisneros expresses her story about society and how we portray women to be perfect and materialistic, when in reality, we are not perfect and we as women each carry flaws. In “Barbie-Q,” Cisneros makes a critique about society’s assumptions of gender roles, appearances of women, and expectations of women.
In the second paragraph, the girls repeat society’s gender roles in their play: “Every time the same story. Your Barbie is roommates with my Barbie, my Barbie's boyfriend comes over and your Barbie steals him, okay?" (Cisneros 559). The non-existing Ken doll is the author's way of accentuating her theme about society's assumptions of young women's interests in men and relationships. The author makes the young girls appear to be centered on the affection and attention from boys. Cisneros makes it clear that the two girls are younger, and young girls should not be thinking about boys, they should be playing with dolls and playing dress up. The two girls are growing up too fast and should not be fixated on the knowledge of boys.
Throughout the short story, Cisneros shows that the girl’s Barbie dolls are flawed. She makes it known to the readers that these t...