The Theme Of I Want To Be Miss America By Julia Alvarez

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Recommended: Beauty standards in society

Society today is very different from society years ago. Society back then didn’t really tell or picture girls to have the perfect body, perfect hair, perfect legs, or perfect anything. Today society has been influencing lots of girls that they have to have the perfect hair, skin, legs, face, etc. Which means girls can’t have any acne, have wrinkles even at age 20, they can’t have any hair in there legs or armpits because that is considered “gross”. In the story “I Want to Be Miss America”, Julia Alvarez introduces her theme, changing into someone else won’t mean there's two of them cause everyone is different, by have the sisters develop more character development by making them become more envy of the contestants because of their looks. In the beginning, the three girls start off by saying how its tradition of watching Miss America contest. They continue to say how the contestants look like with how they are during the show. An important symbol …show more content…

“I knew I would never be one of those girls, ever. It wasn't the blond, blue-eyed looks or the beautiful, leggy figure. It was who she was-an American-and were not.” (Alvarez 43) Apart from the contestants looks it was also because of how they are American while she wasn’t American. Reaching towards the end of the short story one of the girls starts to name off the things of how she wished she would look like instead. “Had we been able to see into the future, beyond our noses, which we thought weren't the right shape; beyond our curly hair, which we wanted to be straight and beyond the screen, which inspired us with a limited vision of what was considered beautiful in America.” (Alvarez 43) She starts to put herself down in a way towards how she looks like compared to the constant girls which would be the symbolism of

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