Alice Van Wart is a writer and teaches literature and writing in the Department of Continuing Education at the University of Toronto. She has published two books of poetry and has written articles on modern and contemporary literature.

In her essay "Rethinking the Seventies: Women Writers and Violence," Elaine Showalter says women writers in the 1970s were experiencing the beginning of an exciting new phase where they "seemed at last able to express anger and passion, to confront their own raging emotions...." Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll" is a highly polished and ironic poem that perfectly demonstrates Showalter's thesis. In "Barbie Doll," Piercy scathingly condemns contemporary expectations placed on women concerning their appearance. The view she expresses in the poem is a feminist one, consistent with the political views she expresses in her numerous poetry collections, novels, and essays, particularly those views that condemn society's attitudes towards women...