Beyoncé is a singer known for her fantastic voice, rejuvenating dance moves, and most importantly her empowering throughout her songs. These skills are no different in her song “Pretty Hurts.” Released on June 10, 2014, from her self-titled album Beyoncé, the song written by Sia, Joshua “Ammo” Coleman, and Beyoncé herself resonates its empowering message with people of all different genders, body types, and races. This song, in particular, is targeted towards women, especially young women who are still developing. Beyoncé gained popularity when she started off in an all-female group named Destiny’s Child back in 1997, and once she broke off from the group, she only continued to grow as an artist and person. In all six of Beyoncé’s solo studio albums, there are songs with galvanizing messages of female power and all of them reached number 1 on the charts. In Beyoncé’s song “Pretty Hurts,” she uses social issues, rhetorical appeals such as pathos, literary devices, metaphors, and vivid imagery to further the theme of female empowerment.
Jane has gotten used to cruelty and biased behavior towards her average looks, and develops a miserable self-esteem that believes the only possible way to describe her exterior is “plain”. This self-esteem prevents her from even beginning to recognize that anyone could appreciate her or find her beautiful in any manner. The society’s typical reactions and judgments shaped Jane’s self-esteem, and prevented her from receiving equal treatment as that of a beautiful woman.
The Beauty Myth’s central argument is the growing standards of physical beauty of women as they grow stronger. This standard has affected women in many ways, such as in the workplace, culture, and religion. The standard has taken over the work of social harassment. The beauty myth expands the belief an unbiased measurement of beauty exists and that women want to express it and men would want that women. The author, Naomi Wolf, states that the beauty myth is not about women themselves, it is about the power of men and their society. The myth supplies power to multibillion dollar cosmetics industries and it keeps women from rising too high in the workplace. Within this book, Wolf shows how the beauty myth functions and affects women in the workplace, media, sex, religion, culture, violence against women by men, and by women themselves in the configuration of cosmetic surgery and eating disorders.
Beauty is determined by society and their standards. Women are expected to be skinny, pretty and a size two which puts a lot of pressure on women. The pressures of society persuade women to go through extreme measures to fit in with society standards. This is evident in the short story “The Falling girl” and “They’re Not Your Husband” as the main characters are impacted by social expectations, insecurity and peer pressure.
There is a cliché quote that people say, “Beauty is in the eye of beholder.” But in the essay “The Ugly Truth About Beauty” (1998) Dave Barry argues about how women who spend countless hours on their so called “beauty” whereas men seem not to care. Barry uses juxtaposition and exaggeration to poke fun at men and women behavior and shed light on the harm that the beauty industry is doing. When Barry argues his point of his essay he addresses both genders, but more specifically teenage to middle age men and women, but he writes about it in a humorous and light-hearted manner.
Beyoncé Knowles, a well-known singer, songwriter uses two of her songs: “Freedom” and “Formation” to tell the story of herself. “Freedom” is the beginning of her story where she is searching for freedom and equality showing that there is still much inequality and injustice for African Americans in America today. The song slowly transitions to a more positive tone when she seems to have made something beneficial out of her difficult situation. “Formation,” however, has a completely different tone. While she does address negative situations from the past at the beginning of the song, she quickly transitions to a more positive tone full of pride in where she came from, who she has become, and what she has overcome. Together, the two songs
Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. At least, that’s what is taught to believe at an early age. Elline Lipkin, however, holds fast to the understanding that as true as that saying may be, there are outside forces that are intent on readjusting our vision to “true beauty”: the kind that can be bought off the shelves. In her article, “Girls’ Bodies, Girls’ Selves: Body Image, Identity, and Sexuality”, Lipkin employs several different external resources to help demonstrate her belief that young girls’ (“Before they even abandon their teddy bears…“ (Para 2)) definition of their own appearance is polluted and distorted by the vastly massive world that is the American media. Besides pulling from other articles and fact sheets, she also effectively utilizes a clearly logical train of thought, an operative tone, and countless examples of emotional appeal.
Raina Kelley covers society's issues and cultural controversies for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.’s. In her article “Beauty Is Defined, and Not By You” aims to convince her readers that women success or not is not depends on beauty. “When I’m on m deathbed, I hope to be smiling in satisfaction about all I accomplished, not that I made it to 102 without any cellulite.” One of her goals is to remain all girls do not get influence by this society, just be brave and continue to reject that beauty is the only way to get ahead. Kelley used personal experiences, facts and examples, also counter argument to create a convincing argument.
Over the past few years, racial tensions in America have heightened. During this period, Black America undergo the daily struggle of witnessing the killing of unarmed black men and women. Victims of these endless killings and police brutality, turned into one of many hashtags, which led to the formations of the Black Lives Matter movement. Solange Knowles, younger sister of Beyoncé, soul singer and songwriter was viewed as the angry black woman. Solange used her platform to speak up. She became the most outspoken black artist for black activism in recent years. She embodies the image of a carefree black girl who is willing to let the world know that she is proud of her blackness.
Black Lives Matter is a national organization striving to rebuild the Black liberation movement; that has become vague in past years. In 2012 after Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, was dismissed for his crime. This movement emerged in response to the institutionalized racism within our society. Whether it 's black on black crime, police brutality or any form of ferocity actions its moral spurious. The past few months there has been a growth in police brutality, resulting in the deaths of many, predominantly those of african descent. We focus on how to improve the relationship with these officers in the black community and cease all racial tensions. Beyonce Knowles is as an American singer, song-writer and actress; who was born in Houston, Texas. Throughout past years Knowles remained silent in the wake of racial tensions, however she recently expressed her beliefs with the use of her music.
Feeling beautiful deals with many factors but it has become incumbent with focus being placed on the physical aspects of person Una Marson writes about beauty and how it drives many women into changing their features and making those features fit into the standard of beauty. Her poem, “Kinky Haired Blues” speaks about that notion, of women wanting to assimilate to what the norm is. Specifically women of ethnic minorities, she talks more about Black Women and the pressure for them to bleach their skin and to iron their hair. Matters such as race are at forefront of the issues in her society and of the society we currently live in today. Una Marson’s poem “Kinky Hair Blues” speaks to the idea of beauty and the standard of beauty. And how many
Beauty is determined by society and their standards. Women are expected to be skinny, pretty and to be a thin size which puts pressure on women. The pressures of society persuade women to go through extreme measures to fit in with society standards. This is evident in the short stories “The Falling girl” and “They’re Not Your Husband” as the main characters are impacted by social expectations, insecurity and peer pressure.
Although embracement or celebrations of this stereotypically black feature may empower these women who reverse or redirect the hegemonic gaze that had been centered on their backsides for so long, these Eurocentric derived presumptions and idealizations of female blackness, nevertheless, remain. However, attempts to redefine these social constructions, while accentuating this feature Beyoncé refers to as “bootylicious,” has transformed beauty industries and ideas of sexual desirability which “subverts social hierarchies and normalcy” (Hobson 88). These redefinitions of beauty, more specifically, black beauty, from the “grotesque, carnivalesque body,” (Hobson 88) seeks “a healthier body image than their white counterparts” who are exclusively depicted as slender and petite (Durham 36-37). Thus, black women begin to visualize their own bodies and other black women bodies in ways that lead to non-sexualized, non-deviant conclusions. Challenging these “controlling images,” as Patricia Hill Collins identifies in Hobson’s article, only “unmirrors” black femininity and its history, a term Hobson cited from black artist and theorist, Lorraine O’Grady, because in order to “name ourselves rather than be named we must first see ourselves” (89). She later adds
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.
We are constantly surrounded by images of the “perfect” woman. She is tall, thin and beautiful. She rarely looks older than 25, has a flawless body, and her hair and clothes are always perfect. She is not human. She is often shown in pieces – a stomach, a pair of legs, a beautifully made up eye or mouth. Our culture judges women, and women judge themselves, against this standard. It is forgotten that “beauty pornography”, as Wolf says, focuses on underweight models that are usually 15 to 20 years old. Flaws, wrinkles and other problems are airbrushed out of the picture.