Women's Beauty Put Down Or Power Source Analysis

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.

Explanation: Sontag discusses the endless battle women face with beauty. By showing that the term beauty “has accumulated certain demeaning overtones” (Sontag 238), she shows the negative connotation beauty has now received and explains

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:

Sontag uses effective language in order to establish variation in her essay. She begins with the observation on the relation between culture and language, and uses logical appeals to evoke her philosophy of beauty. Beauty is power and she demonstrates this yet again by manipulating another speaker's (Cocteau's) perspective that “the privileges of beauty are immense”(215). The author states that beauty is a power that women and men have naturally and as a result, have the power to attract what they want. Sontag also uses the effects of ethos,

Over the year’s society has developed tremendously; especially when it comes to gender equality. There was once a time where women were not allowed to vote or even leave the house because they were viewed as the people whose job was to stay home to cook, clean, and take care of the kids. It is 2017 now and we’ve come a long way at fighting for our rights. Although we have come a long way, there are still issues we face in society. We are constantly struggling to break these standards that women should look a certain way to be considered beautiful. Along with this there are still many things that in a way state women aren’t as great, strong, or as smart as men. While we’ve succeeded in some aspects to have equal rights, there are many more things

A Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source? Susan Sontag, a jewish-american writer, argues about how the external beauty influences the inner beauty. She starts giving a paradoxical and accurate example of Socrates, where she said that he was everything but beautiful and for the Greeks it was kind of contradictory because they had always thought that the inside beauty would be compatible with some other kind of beauty. According to the writer, people were used to say that a woman was beautiful depending on her inside and outside beauty, but we are also amazed “when someone who is beautiful is also intelligent and talented” (Sontag 387).

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

Thinness is an aesthetic trait that has been highly valued in American media. The next section of analysis focuses on how body size is displayed and interpreted in Glamour.

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.

Wolf discusses the effect that these standards are having on women in the workplace. A woman’s beauty, or lack of it, can be used against her. In 1986, Mechelle Vinson lost a sexual harassment case. “Vinson was young and ‘beautiful’ and carefully dressed. The district court ruled that her appearance counted against her.” (Wolf 38) “In Hopkins v. Price-Waterhouse, Ms. Hopkins was denied a partnership because she needed to learn to ‘walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely,’ and ‘wear makeup’.” She brought in more business than any other employee. (Wolf 39)

In Sontag’s “A Woman’s Beauty” the structure the author uses for the story has a dramatic impact on the readers. In the story, Sontag structures the essay base on many historical events and other religious ideas to support her idea, how a woman sometime is only judge by her appearance. Specifically, Sontag uses three ideas in the story to support her argument. First is in history what the Greeks believe in a woman’s beauty. Second, Sontag discuss about how the Christian religion plays a major role in shaping how a woman is judge only base on her beauty. In the end, Sontag talks about in today’s society how woman are still judge by her beauty. However, in the end Sontag mentions how the society should stop judging a woman only base on her beauty.

The concept of femininity is associated with beauty. As sontag explains, “A beautiful woman, we say in English. But a handsome man”. Sontag discusses how beauty used to be a word that described the whole being and addressed both sexes but has morphed into a charged word that focuses only on the outer self and is usually used toward women. This change in language