Rhetorical Analysis of the Ugly Truth About Beauty

know the feeling one can have when one hears a beautiful song that brings joy to ones heart, stand in a field of flowers that excites ones eyes, or admire a face that is visually pleasing. The controversial issue that surrounds beauty is that some believe that true beauty is defined by someone’s outer appearance, while others believe it is something that is experiences through a person’s character. Beauty is defined as the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the sense or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit. The secret of beauty has been a quest of humans for centuries. It has been determined that women and some men spend up to one third of their income on products and procedures that enhance their looks. People spend way too much time looking in the mirror, scrutinizing, worrying, fretting, and wishing people could change something about themselves. People dream of looking like the girl at work because she has great hair, or the girl people meet at a party because she is skinny, with the perfect nose. This happens because people are constantly on social media. A pretty face is not a complete definition of beauty, nor is the quality of one being kind and compassionate. To contain beauty, someone or something does not have to be physically beautiful. Beauty is everywhere. Take a simple flower.

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:

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.

"There's more pressure on women today to be beautiful, thin, hot, sexy, and young." (English). Since the 20th century we have started relying on media and technology and this has influenced people to create new inventions but we have also started creating images of humans. When it comes to the ideal women the people in society have created her to be fit in the right areas. Women struggle with the insecurities of never being able to achieve the ideal body shape because the pictures are processed through Photoshop. This is also influenced on younger girls as they make every effort for a certain figure. In the novel, The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver criticizes over-sexualization, by using elements of fiction to show that many men are blind

“In the 1840s, the first nude photographs of prostitutes were taken; advertisements using images of “beautiful” women first appeared in mid-century” (Wolf 215). This is an example of how media can show what is considered “beautiful.” We can now see something similar in contemporary time in which beauty magazines show young woman on the cover who are considered beautiful by the standards of society. The issue of the beauty magazine is it talks about how to get the perfect body with help of a certain brand of makeup. These images of photo shop perfection begins to affect the way woman see themselves and deem themselves as

Cultural Analysis Essay In today’s society, people are pressured into looking their best all the time. Advertisements, news articles and magazines set the standards for how people should appear to be considered beautiful. Even in Disney stories, the protagonist is perceived as a beautiful princess while the antagonist is a wretched witch. Corporations have made billions of dollars off of making people feel better about their bodies through plastic surgery.

“So?! We’re talking beauty here. Don’t say “So?” Beauty is the real deal. You are the center of any moment of your life. People stare. Men flock. I’ve seen you get offered discounts on makeup for no reason. Parents treat beautiful children better. Studies show your income goes up...” (1038)

3). This sheds light to the high price of beauty that is accumulating in the United States. The numbers become even worst when it is shown that education is more affordable in comparison to beauty. The YWCA shares that “One full year of tuition and fees at an instate public college is equal to almost five years of saving $100 a month normally spent on cosmetics and beauty products” (Beauty at Any Cost, 2008, p.2). With facts like these, it becomes evident what our society places the upmost importance on. Women are more than exterior appearances and this tale does not help at all in showcasing that. This tale has reinforced this racist beauty ideal that only white women with blonde hair and blue eyes and women that can be easily dominated by males may be seen as beautiful. Where does that leave the rest of us who don’t fit this perfect box? The women who do not fit into this rigid mold of what constitutes as beautiful are left tearing themselves apart and going to extremes to accomplish a pricey goal that will not be as nearly as beneficial as compared to an

I’m too tall. I’m too small. I wish I could be more skinner, have bigger muscles, look like someone I might have seen in a popular magazine. Do these questions sound familiar? Maybe questions one have asked before? If someone has asked these questions before, they are not the only one’s. Dave Berry says, “Why do women have such low self-esteem? There are many complex psychological and social reasons”(343). I do agree with that statement because as a person grows and gets older, there physical image changes along with their body shape as well. But there are multiple factors that lead to these questions such as self-esteem issues, not knowing your self-worth, and self-esteem instability. After reading “The Ugly Truth About Beauty” by Dave Berry and “Externally Contingent and Unstable Self-Worth as Predictors of Depression in College Women: A 3-Month Study” by Lopez, etal. I was able to correlate the two and come up with three intersections of why women can sometimes have no confidence in themselves.

In Naomi Wolf’s documentary, The Beauty Myth, it is said that the ideology of beauty is the last one remaining of the ideologies that still has the power to control both women and men (2010). These ideologies of femininity

No matter how much she has to offer, everyone only notices her imperfections, appearance is all they care about. She loses herself in society’s portrayal of beauty, “So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up” (Piercy). " Barbie Doll" gives a view of how absurd society expectations are. Contrasting the poem “Phenomenal Woman” published by Angelou in 1978, which is an anthem of being a strong self-defined woman.

In the commercial “Fotoshop by Adobe” Rosten effectively convinces his audience of the absurdity of society’s obsession with physical appearance and the beauty trick to appear more attractive by purchasing Photoshop. Rosten achieves this by applying emotional appeal, satire and hyperbole. Beauty is something that is largely considered a physical attribute. Beauty has and will always be desirable. Today society believes that beauty is the way to get attention and acceptance. Movies, magazines, music and other Arts of entertainment portray beauty as the epitome of getting love, comfort, acceptance, and riches.

Beauty has an important impact on how people view others. Today, society targets women and pressures them to look their best at all times. Women internalize these views and therefore have self-esteem problems about how they look. The movie America the Beautiful displayed how women are viewed and how it affects their lives. In order for one to better understand society’s views of women and how societal definitions of beauty affects them, one could view America the Beautiful to see examples of how women are portrayed in advertisements, how women feel about their looks, and how women affect their health just to look good.

Today’s media portrays beauty with impractical ideals of perfection, driving an unhealthy obsession in men and women of all ages. Presumably, these morbid fixations will produce mental, emotional, social, and economic problems, unless mass communication outlets aid younger generations to become better acquainted with a personal sense of beauty rather than industry ideals.