The Perfect Woman In James Poniewozik's The Princess Paradox '

If asked to think of one’s perfect idea of a woman many might say beautiful, motherly, and ambitious. Two main parts of this idea of perfection have always been prominent in society, beautiful and motherly. The idea that an ideal woman is ambitious is new to today's society. Women in today’s world feel pressured to uphold their perfect reputation that has been expected of them for centuries. The influence of today’s media has begun to imprint the idea of the perfect woman in the minds of young girls making them believe that they must make sacrifices to please others. In the movie Legally Blonde, main character Elle Woods throws herself out of her comfort zone in order to prove herself. This implies that women feel that they must conform to

In the article, “The Princess Paradox” by James Poniewozik, he explains that beauty is just not enough anymore for a woman to be considered desirable. Poniewozik says “But to succeed on both the feminist and the fantasy level, the new Cinderella has developed rules and conventions as strict as a Joseph Campbell template.* She should be pretty, but in a class-president way, not a head-cheerleader way”(Poniewozik). This implies that being smart is now just as important as being pretty. Girls in today’s society are expected to be ambitious. They are expected to get good grades and go on to a job that they know they can do perfectly. In today’s society, girls feel that they need to prove themselves. They feel inadequate when they are not smart. In the movie Legally Blonde directed by Robert Luketic, Elle Woods is a beautiful girl. She was dating a man named Warner Huntington III. Elle has suspicions that Warner is going to propose to her, but instead, he says, “Proposing?! Elle, If I’m going to be a politician, I need to marry a Jackie, not a -- Marilyn” (Luketic). This implies that men in today’s society want a woman who is smart, a woman who is going to be successful. Although girls are expected to be educated and successful, they do not have the same expectations as boys. In the Ted Talk by Reshma Saujani, she says “We’re taught to smile pretty, play it safe, get all A’s”

Since the world began women have always been expected to bear children for their husbands. The thought of having children can be scary to women because their whole life they have been working to look beautiful and start a career. More and more women these days are deciding to put themselves first and deciding to wait to have children or not have them at all. In the book, Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-first Century, Anita Harris states, “The ‘girls with the world at their feet’ are identifiable by their commitment to exceptional careers and career planning, their belief in their capacity to invent themselves and succeed, and their display of a consumer lifestyle. They are also distinguished by a desire to put off childbearing until ‘later’”(Harris). This implies that it is very tough for women who have a successful and demanding career to have children and be focused on their family. Having a child takes a lot of time and patience, and a woman who is focused on her career might not want to take time away from that to have a child. Women feel that they are constantly making sacrifices in order to please everyone else but themselves. This common theme is described in the article “A Mother’s Day Kiss-Off” by Leslie Bennetts. Bennetts says “Her retreat seemed like a powerful metaphor for the ways in which women sacrifice parts of themselves that they shouldn’t have to give up” (Bennetts). In