Focus On Your Beauty : Lucy Grealy 's Narrative Mirror

“People often say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder,” according to Salma Hayek. Society should have a positive outlook on body image, rather than face a disorder that can change one’s whole life. Negative body image can result from the media, with photoshop and editing, celebrity fad diets, and society’s look at the perfect image. Negative body image can lead to dangerous eating disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia. It can also take a risk to unhealthy habits, such as smoking, alcohol, and drugs. It is important to stress the effects of body image, because the world still struggles with this today. Society should not be affected by

     Sure, some of us have this great confidence within ourselves about looking great, but that does not hold true for everyone. I understand the pain or disgust, or even disappointment one feels when they look in the mirror and say, “I wish I could change this or that about myself”. Although this piece is written about the author’s life, it holds meaning and connects with for many people; one only has to dig deep enough to find one. For me, it was to realize what is important in life can change, adapt and that we must explore our inner selves and find our own path in life.

When the word “beauty” is used, most people think of a female with a fit body shape, hairless body and light skin color which is wrong because of all these types of attitudes impact on a woman’s life. In “Through the Mirror of Beauty Culture”, Rice argues that we should rethink the concept of beauty and rely on “beauty myth”. The main focus is to explore different methods of how the society and cultural visualizing have shaped women’s appearance. As you may recall, the body plays a major role in a woman's life because it affects her self-esteem, psychological health and character. The author describes a variety of different types of “body projects” or “self-making projects” which people with body dissatisfaction practice to protect themselves

“Learning to love yourself will be the hardest thing you’ll ever do in life”. The 21st century, the era of perfection. The era where you are told how to look or else you are not considered beautiful to the world. The era where people like myself go through extremes to be beautiful even just feel beautiful. The extremes that I took were, looking for “love” anywhere with anyone, not caring about my health, and putting my academic career in danger, all of that just to be and feel beautiful.

The fashion industry plays a huge role in portraying bad images of ideal beauty, which in turn affects today’s society perception of their own body image. Not only are women affected by what is seen and heard about how the perfect body should appear, children of young ages are now feeling insecure and obsessed with their bodies before they reach teenage years. This ‘ideal image’ the fashion industry continues to enforce only focuses on very thin models who seem to be in shape and are very healthy. Furthermore, many people think of the influence from the fashion industry as being human representations (models). Because of the rising problem with the image of beauty within the fashion industry, it is shown that even mannequins and non-human representations (mannequins, dolls, photoshopping) of bodies play a significant role in women’s body image; which causes problems to the individual. (Anshutz & Engels, 2010). Body image and self-satisfaction, eating disorders and non-human representations all can cause harm to the individual, if prolonged.

She had a healthy body, she was intelligent. She had an “abundant sexual drive and possessed strong arms and back,” (2, 8-9). She was herself blind to her own positive qualities as she was too busy trying to please others with her looks, “she went to and fro apologizing,” (2, 10). She apologized to everyone for her imperfections. The imagery of, “Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs” (2, 11), portrays the indifference society felt towards her. She wanted to be appreciated, but she was only seen her for her looks and not her inner self. She had learned from the time she was a child her imperfections made her not good enough or socially

Nonfiction is a genre of writing in which the author reflects on actual events in history. Lucy Grealy writes about an intense part of her life in a memoir. A memoir is written by the person it is about, usually written on the topic of something the author did or witnessed. Throughout this book, the author gives off vivid imagery and themes in order to help us understand just how difficult her life was. For example, in chapter 12, “Mirrors” on pages 207 to 208, Lucy describes just how a man loving her could change her view on life. Imagery, diction and setting also help to bring Lucy’s memoir together. Although this section seems to be about Lucy finding love, it is actually about the search and acceptance of self-identity as we can see from

Does being outwardly beautiful make us feel more confident in ourselves? How often do we bring ourselves down because we don’t feel beautiful, but what is beauty? Alice Walker addresses the topic of not accepting and embracing oneself because of outward appearance. In Alice Walker’s narrative, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self,” she describes her story of feeling beautiful to completely ugly and then beautiful again. Her story gives the reader a better understanding of what true beauty is. Narrative rhetorical pattern, pathos, and rhetorical questions help Alice Walker teach her audience about beauty.

Many begin the day by arranging their hair, finding clothes to wear, or any other daily habit that may alter one’s image. We can thank social pressure for this everyday burden. In the late nineteen-hundred’s, people, especially women, had to obsess over their looks and constantly improve upon them. Thankfully, in today’s communities, those features are not judged upon as much as four decades ago.

It’s difficult to envision a world where idealized female imagery is not plastered everywhere, but our present circumstance is a relatively new occurrence. Before the mass media existed, our ideas of beauty were restricted to our own communities. Until the introduction of photography in 1839, people were not exposed to real-life images of faces and bodies. Most people did not even own mirrors. Today, however, we are more obsessed with our appearance than ever before. But the concern about appearance is quite normal and understandable given society’s standards. According to Jane Kilborne, “Every period of history has had its own standards of what is and is not beautiful, and every contemporary society has its own distinctive concept of the

The women in the 17th century were incorrectly accustomed to the necessity of becoming a picture perfect person; which is a bad habit that only a handful of people are able to fathom. Perfect is an expectation that you can’t achieve in life until you realize to accept yourself for who you are. The conjecture of beauty and our bodies is set at a level that is insurmountable. To fathom this we can look at today’s society, if we aren’t what society wants we aren’t accepted. Society’s idealistic view on beauty is something we should not tolerate because we should accept people for who they are within themselves. In the dramatic monologues “Barbie Doll,” “Cinderella,” and “Applicant,” they are expected to either be something they aren’t, or desiring someone who isn’t even real.

In this day and age, the epidemic of these so called ‘beauty’ standards is only getting worse and worse. Because of photo modification, low self esteem in regular everyday people is starting to become something that is nearly considered normal. Today, 42% of girls from age 5-8 want to be skinnier, 52% of girls aged 9 to 13 feel better when they are dieting and by the age of 17, 78% of girls are unhappy with their own bodies. Think about

In the short film“Doll face” by Andy Huang .This move sent us a message that is “Do not be brain watch for the media.And Huang poses haunting questions about beauty self-image. technology, and what it means to be human.

Don’t judge a book by its cover” was a saying during my childhood I heard every day. Growing up I was not the handsome boy you ever seen. I had a double chin, side rolls, and my stomach overlap my waistline. That’s where the name I received, “fat boy” came from was because of my appearance. That name for some reason made my father and brother laugh till tears come out. As I got older the double, side rolls, and my overlapping stomach started to slim and made me start looking normal size. As I was starting to look human all of sudden these pimples and acne started to appear. Transitioning to this stage of my life which caused my mom to teach me a valuable lesson and that was to “Don’t judge a book by its cover”.

The result of society 's beauty standard is health and mental issues such as eating disorders, depression, suicide, and more. We constantly speak of peace as a society and accepting the differences in others but how can we accept others when we can’t accept ourselves for having imperfections. We have trouble with self acceptance because we are constantly being shown what we should look like and when we don’t look like the images presented to us we feel like there is something wrong with us. We start to see all of our imperfections in a negative light which impacts us heavily. As a society we should start teaching each other how to love ourselves and then how to love others and accept flaws because that is what makes us human.