Amy Cunningham Why Women Smile

Marilyn Monroe established her temptress image through multiples of publicity shots. An important element contributing to this image, which is clearly displayed in this magazine cover, is her facial expression. Marilyn Monroe established a universally familiar expression, her face raised, mouth open and bared teeth, which became vital to her image. These peculiarities of her facial expression are signifiers which help to create her marketable and sexual image. The open mouth and bared teeth become overt signs of sexual allure, playfulness and seductiveness. This contributes to the beliefs that females have to appear as a sexual object to remain a marketable image in society. Marilyn looking upwards, together with the photograph taken from a camera below her (angled

As of recently, the media has been flooded with positive interpretations of beauty standards all over the world. According to various sources, beauty ideals, in women especially, are socially constructed in order to judge a person’s value based on physical attractiveness; therefore, it is highly encouraged that people pay attention to their looks and take care of themselves, in order for others to create a positive first impression of one’s character. It is no secret that beauty standards vary from one culture to the next and it is difficult to establish a universal principle of what is considered beautiful. Many countries’ ideals contrast one another and, as a result, allow for stereotypes to emerge. This is the case between American

The character was illiterate and thus excluded her from others. In the beginning of the story, the shame from the daughter and others was made prevalent as the author wrote “I learned to be ashamed of my mother” (58). The shame and prejudice began to grow when the mother goes to the school to register her daughter. The mother needed and asked for help when she was filling out the forms that were required for her daughter to go to school. The author wrote “The women asks my mother what she means . . . The women still seem not to understand. ‘I can’t read it. I don’t know how to read or write,” (60) showing that the women the mother was asking for help, did not understand her question, because her ignorance of other people. Her poor understanding of the question clearly made the mother feel even more ashamed of herself. The author goes on to write “My mother looks at me, then looks away. I know almost all of her looks, but this one is brand new to me.”(61) exhibiting how the mother never felt so ashamed and embarrassed in front of her daughter. Once the woman realizes that she was on a higher “level” than the mother, she agreed to help, the author wrote “and suddenly appears happier, so much more satisfied with everything”(61). The mother was being ridiculed and humiliated by the second, as the other

Her mother keeps telling her daughter not to do certain stuff, this comes off as being a protective parent. Then the essay takes a turn for the worse, the mother tone comes off with lots of anger and disgust. She becomes angry at her daughter and says, “on Sunday try to walk like a lady and not a slut that you are so bent on becoming” (Kincaid 320). The mother is throwing out so many different emotions at her daughter, at which they are not even true. The daughter is not fighting back with her mother about anything until we get to the middle of the paragraph. The daughter only speaks several times throughout, but when she fought back towards the middle of the paragraph she tells her mother that she is not becoming a slut. People only tend to fight back during these situations to protect themselves against false accusations. But eventually, the mother uses the advice tone to her daughter showing her how to “iron her father’s khaki pants so essay users they don’t have a crease” (Kincaid 320). The mother's tone to her daughter changes in the beginning, middle, and end. It starts out with a helpful tone, then to a strict tone, then to a helpful tone again.

The beauty standard is a culturally constructed notion of physical attractiveness that has become increasingly imperative for women and men. However, this standard has become extremely perilous to men and women’s self-image. Camille Paglia, a highly educated individual who earned her PhD at Yale University and became a highly acclaimed author, explicates this conception in her essay “The Pitfalls of Plastic Surgery”. Paglia suggests that the beauty standard idealizes women to look like “sex symbols with an unattainable grandeur” (776). She continues to claim that it forces her audience of higher class women to pay large sums of money in order to alter their features ultimately conforming to a very “parochial” definition of beauty (776). Although Paglia is a highly credible source, she illogically appeals to the reader’s fears in order to persuade them. Paglia fails to give any credible outside sources which affirms her preposterous beliefs. Contrary to her inconsistencies, Daniel Akst, a social journalist and graduate from New York University provides his audience with reputable sources in order to persuade his audience. Daniel Akst believes that there needs to be a “democratization of physical beauty” in which instead of attempting to alter the beauty standard, we must first change how we view ourselves. Akst provides credible sources to establish his credibility where he observes cases studies and cultural experiments from scientists and organizations including:

When it comes to things like gender equality, and feminism people are going to have their own feelings and opinions about these certain subjects. It could bring strong, sympathetic, angry, or uninterested. Either way, it brings you some type of emotion to create pathos. She also uses words like “we” and “us” to involve herself with the audience to make feel what she’s feeling. One thing she states that “If we want to live as women, some separatism is forced upon us: Mills College is a wise embodiment of that separatism. The war-games world wasn’t made by us or for us; we can’t even breathe the air there without masks” (1).

The essay begins by talking about when Staples ended up walking behind a woman on a Chicago street. At this instance, her pace began to increase until, finally, she was sprinting away from him. In the beginning paragraphs, he introduces words such as “victim” and “mean”. By doing this, a vivid picture is easily formed in the mind of the reader of when he came up behind this lady on the street. The situation was displayed in a way that made the reader suspect that something was going to do happen to her. As the passage continues, Staples beings to change this picture and starts to pull emotion from the reader. "It was in the echo of that terrified woman's footfalls, that I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I'd come into - the ability to alter public space in ugly ways." (205) This newly expressed feeling is a prime example of Staples beginning to draw an emotional response from his audience. He is able to

Early then goes on with his essay by describing the hardships his daughters have faced when trying out hairstyles. He appeals to the mournful emotions of the audience by describing a real life account of his daughter being made fun of at school. When his daughter Linnet got an afro style haircut one group of black girls at her school refused to play with her. She was told,”You look so ugly with that hair.” Early adapts a sad tone when Linnet describes herself as, “I don’t think I am beautiful at all. I think I am just ordinary.” Early uses an emotional appeal along with a sad tone in order to inform the nation of what many African American girls deal with. He does this to inform the reader of self-consciousness a particular “African- American” disease.

Despite being looked at in a certain way, Women are being portrayed as “going exactly where their mothers and grandmothers have already ‘been’: into sexual bondage at the hands of a male ‘Friend’” (Christle 1). This is showing how even though women are changing the way society works, some people still want it to be the same. In the story Connie’s mom wanted Connie to be like her and her sister, just the average, not overly pretty looking lady. Some people think that “women have been silenced,” (Spelman and Lugones 574) but Connie had other ideas, she wanted to be different from them. She was constantly looking at herself in the mirror and thinking about what others were thinking about her. When she went out, she would always wear nice clothes that would get her noticed. Looking through a feminist lens one can conclude that Connie’s family sees women now as they always were.

The central message of this work is that society is obsessed with appearances. The point the author is trying to make is beauty should not be the most important trait of a person. In today’s society everything is based on looks, people are more concerned about a person’s outward appearance. People strive to

From this moment on, every acceptable quality she has will mean absolutely nothing to her. As long as she has her big nose and her two thick legs, that is all she will see herself as wholly. This leads her to thinking about permanently removing her unwanted flaws. She believes that if she removes her flaws, she will finally be accepted by society. In both stories, the reader interprets that both the woman and the young girl have specific qualities that someone in their lives has pointed out as flaws. The opinions of these certain people obviously matter to both of them, so they eventually decide that they want their flaws removed for good.

For my syllabus assignment, I found a fascinating article titled “Why Women Smile” by Amy Cunningham. This is a great piece that looks at how women’s emotions are still heavily influenced by society, whether its suppressing certain emotions or exaggerating false ones. While this article was written over a decade ago, I feel like the points brought up and the overall message are still very relevant in todays culture and society.

The classmate in this poem is a metaphor for society and how through puberty both sexes go through changes and become more aware of one another as well as pass judgment between both sexes, particularly more in women. The girl realizes that standards have been set for her and she needs to look a certain way to be beautiful. However, according to society she is just a girl with “ a great big nose and fat legs” and thus affecting her emotionally which has negative effects on her self-esteem and putting pressure on her emotionally ( Piercy 791).

Thesis statement: Today I will be answering a few of the questions men have about women which include “ Why are women so insecure?”, “ Why do women think they are ugly without makeup?”, and “ Why do women think men have bad intentions?”.

It 's not a mystery that society 's ideals of beauty have a drastic and frightening effect on women. Popular culture frequently tells society, what is supposed to recognize and accept as beauty, and even though beauty is a concept that differs on all cultures and modifies over time, society continues to set great importance on what beautiful means and the significance of achieving it; consequently, most women aspire to achieve beauty, occasionally without measuring the consequences on their emotional or physical being. Unrealistic beauty standards are causing tremendous damage to society, a growing crisis where popular culture conveys the message that external beauty is the most significant characteristic women can have. The approval of prototypes where women are presented as a beautiful object or the winner of a beauty contest by evaluating mostly their physical attractiveness creates a faulty society, causing numerous negative effects; however, some of the most apparent consequences young and adult women encounter by beauty standards, can manifest as body dissatisfaction, eating disorders that put women’s life in danger, professional disadvantage, and economic difficulty.