The Ideal Female and the Oppression of Women
By having an impossible ideal female look, society is beating us as women. We have no time to come up in world through politics, business, or any other power related structure because we’re spending all of our time trying to maintain, or achieve this beauty. The ideal woman is ever-changing. Different features and different characteristics are valued at different times and throughout different cultures. And each time the ideals change, or one changes the culture they live in, a woman must change too because if she’s not the ideal beauty, then she is less of a woman. For instance, in Judith Ortiz Cofer’s case, she was beautiful, tall, and light skinned in the Puerto Rican culture, but in the American culture, she was short, dark skinned, and not the most beautiful. Beauty is relevant to time and place. And often, we forget this and are manipulated by society to think the beauty of the time and place is the most important thing for a woman to have.
It’s not only about oppression, it has a great deal to do with money. Men, and other women too, capitalize on women’s insecurities. And if we don’t have any insecurities about our bodies, they’ll make sure we develop some by pointing out how much we don’t look like the ideal woman. We’re too misshaped, spotty, old, flabby, fat, skinny, or the wrong color. We go in for breast enhancement, liposuction, facelifts, nose jobs, skin color altering, we buy into certain fad diets, we purchase makeup and hair coloring and styling products, and the new exercise machine miracle worker. Beauty is a multi-million dollar operation that can’t afford for any women to love themselves as they are.
The current beauty ideal for women, tall, very thin,...
... middle of paper ...
... didn’t have her wig on when he came over. She got real embarrassed and out of breathe fumbling around for it, so my dad picked it up and handed it to her. A lot of times it seems, like for Donna Walton in “What’s a Leg got to Do with It?”, disabled people are too busy overcoming the illness or the pain they suffer from, to care what other people think. It only takes one person to bring the doubt out that disabled people are less man or woman, or that they’re less capable. It’s important to recognize this and make a conscious effort to acknowledge them as being capable and complete.
Recognition and acknowledgement are fundamental ways we can overcome the oppression of all beauty ideals. If we strive in our minds to fight the messages we’re getting from society, other people will eventually establish that there are freeing alternatives to these harmful messages.
Beauty is a cruel mistress. Every day, Americans are bombarded by images of flawless women with perfect hair and smooth skin, tiny waists and generous busts. They are presented to us draped in designer clothing, looking sultry or perky or anywhere in between. And although the picture itself is alluring, the reality behind the visage is much more sinister. They are representations of beauty ideals, sirens that silently screech “this is what a woman is supposed to look like!” Through means of media distribution and physical alteration, technology has created unrealistic beauty ideals, resulting in distorted female body images.
Visualize a teenage girl watching television, surfing the internet, and reading magazines. She sees beautiful women everywhere she turns. She is looking in her bedroom mirror wondering why she does not have similar beauty. She begins to feel self-aware because she reads and hears criticizing comments about the females who are just like her. She says to herself, “Am I not considered beautiful because my skin is not as clear as Angelina Jolie? Do I not fit in the category “pretty” because I do not dress like Beyoncé? Or am I not referred to as “cute” because my hair is not as straight and silky as Taraji P. Henson?” Now imagine yourself being that teenage girl. How would you feel if you were consistently exposed to a judgmental society that does not accept you? You would want to be considered beautiful because you are unique, you are an individual, and you are a person made with both inner and outer beauty.
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate on the mind on the present moment. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a man and his son, who remain unnamed throughout the novel, are on a journey heading south after an unnamed catastrophe has struck the world. The conditions they face are unforgiving: rotting corpses, fires, abandoned towns and houses. The man and his son are among the few living creatures remaining on Earth who have not been driven to murder, rape, and cannibalism. Unfortunately, the father’s health worsens as they travel, and by the time they reach the ocean, he passes away. The boy remains by his side for days until the boy meets a kind family who invites him to join them. The boy must say goodbye to his father,
Our society is entirely based on looks and how “the perfect women should be”. To be pretty you are expected to have the perfect body with the perfect face and hair. You could never cut your hair short because you would be considered a dyke. If you’re makeup isn’t perfect you are considered ugly and if you don’t have the “hourglass figure” you are considered fat and overweight. “Despite higher global self-esteem, women do not feel good about their appearance. This disconnect can be attributed, at least in part, to concerns about body image.” (@PsychToday, paragraph 4) Our society and social media is so caught up on how every woman should look that our own judgment has been clouded and we always believe we need to look and act that way. “The truth is that women’s insecurity about their appearance is driven by competition with other women.”(@PsychToday, paragraph 16) All we do nowadays is compare ourselves to others and that’s not how it should be. You are considered to be a “whore” such as Eve if you sleep around, so women are afraid to do it. You are considered to be “weak” if you stay at home and can’t support yourself, such as Lori. Our world is so caught up in people thinking that they need to be a certain way in order to impress themselves and others. Why do women shave their legs? Why do woman dye their hair? Why do woman get spray tans? Everything we do has to do with our appearance in order to impress
During early times men were regarded as superior to women. In Tennessee William’s play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, Stanley Kowalski, the work’s imposing antagonist, thrives on power. He embodies the traits found in a world of old fashioned ideals where men were meant to be dominant figures. This is evident in Stanley’s relationship with Stella, his behavior towards Blanche, and his attitude towards women in general. He enjoys judging women and playing with their feelings as well.
...is glimpse of happiness in the book is beautiful because McCarthy wants to show that brief moment of love between father and son. They then head farther south through a coastal city, when more bad luck strikes. Someone shoots an arrow from a window and hits The Man in the leg. This causes The Man to become very sick which causes them to camp in the woods for a couple nights. As they getting ready for bed, the boy asks his father what color the sea is, The Man responds by saying, “ it used to be blue.” The boy then drifts off into a dead sleep dreaming about the ocean. The ocean is this scenario is a symbol of humanity that still shows in the boy. It gives one hope that in times like this someone can still think of happy things.
However, there was a time that this distinction was taken to the ultimate extreme. One man alone followed God among the multitudes in the civilization that arose after the fall. His name was Noah. Genesis 6 tells us that “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.” Because of mans wickedness, He decided to send a flood to destroy that wickedness and to kill everyone on the earth except Noah and his family. The narrative of this drastic event in Genesis 6-9 show that God will not tolerate great wickedness forever. Several events including the flood, Sodom and Gomorra, Nineveh, and Babel show us who God is. He is a God of righteousness and justice and hates the wickedness of the world. Ed Hindson and Gary Yates explain that the events surrounding the tower of Babel indicate that God blesses those who obey and scatters those who disobey. As believers, we can see that God desires a heart that seeks Him above all else. Even when everyone else in the world has turned away from God, each of us must stand strong in our faith just as Noah did. When our country is turning from God and redefining God’s intended purpose for us and creation, we know His heart and that we must follow no matter how strong the current is raging against
In the article “Beating Anorexia and Ganing Feminism,” Marni Grossman shares her experiance of how she overcame her struggle with anorexia through understanding the feminist movement. Marni objectafies the ways in which society’s expectations and ideas of what it means to have “beauty” is having and negitaive impact. I had a very similar experiance to Marni, in fact the first time I hated my apperance was in the seventh grade. I have olive skin and bold brows, features which i was often complamented on, yet hated. Shawn and Lee argue that “there is no fixed idea of beauty”, suggesting how social ideals from society differs depending on the culture (183). I remember A male student was bullying all the females in the class by Inscribing Gender
It is unfortunate that we live in a society that places such a great emphasis and consideration towards the aesthetics of beauty. What is more unfortunate is that beauty itself is not defined by any realistic qualities or pragmatics. Rather it is defined by society and what the particular or dominant class in society feels beauty is. In today’s society in order for a woman to be looked at as beautiful she must posses a combination of qualities, such as, a slim body, straight hair, fair skinned, full lips, straight sort of raised nose and so on. In the society that the Breedloves lived in, beauty had a lot to do with racism and the dominant class that influenced it. To be a woman of beauty in that society you had to be blond hair, blue eyed and fair skinned. If you couldn’t exactly look like that the closer you came to it the better you were viewed. You also had to behave in a certain manner i.e. well groomed, soft spoken, and have high morals. In other words you had to look like a stereo typical European and for colored women loose all the funky things that made them who they were: “The careful development of thrift, patience, high ...
...he “dead white and sightless eyes”(1); this creature represents the evils of humanity and its failure to exist. McCarthy blurs the border between dreams and reality in order to emphasize the inherent weakness of humans to let their realities be taken over.
“Looks don’t matter; beauty is only skin-deep” (Godfrey, 2013). We hear these sayings all the time, yet we live in a society that seems to constantly contradict this idea (Godfrey, 2013). If looks don’t matter, why is every woman in magazines photoshopped? If looks don’t matter, why are women constantly harming their bodies because they are unhappy with how they look and just want to fit in (Godfrey, 2013)? The unrealistic standard of beauty that women are bombarded with everyday gives them a goal that is impossible (Godfrey, 2013). Sociocultural standard of feminine beauty is presented in almost all forms of popular media, forcing women with images that portray what is considered to be the ideal body (Serdar). A majority of the models
It’s around 2348 BC and there is violence everywhere. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually “(Genesis 6:5). God is saying that humans have stopped thinking (about the Lord) or following the Lord completely and going on about their business. When God saw this he “was sorry that he had made human-kind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:6). The word “sorry” in Genesis 6:6 is translated to the word “Nacham” in Hebrew. One of the definitions of this word is the word “repent”, and if we look at synonyms for repent we find the word “compassion”. In Genesis 6:7 God says “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created- people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” Again we see the word “sorry” which leads us back to compassion. The definition of the word compassion in the dictionary is sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings of others. This means that God changed his mind and was going to show compassion. These three verses show a lot of evidence that God is showing mercy and grace.
...th 2001). Roth argues that the concept of international jurisdiction is not a new idea but was exercised by the US government in the 1970 after an aircraft hijacking. Also the war crime courts established after the end of World War II exercised international jurisdiction. In fact the Geneva Convention states that is a person regardless of their nationality should be brought before the court of any state in which that person has committed grave breaches of law and convention. Roth states that the concept of international jurisdiction is not a new one but that only in recent years have states been willing to act on universal jurisdiction and go after criminals of the international community regardless of their stating or power within the international community. Roth believes in the ability and authority of international organizations and institutions (Roth 2001).
Von Galhn and Taulbee. 2013. Law Among Nations. An Introduction to Public International Law. Pearson Education.
I would like to begin with the fact that women have always been known to dedicate their time to beauty. Those who are devoted to their appearance most often believe that beauty brings power, popularity, and success. Women believe this, because they grow up reading magazines that picture beautiful women in successful environments; not to mention they are popular models and world famous individuals. Beautiful women are no longer just a priority for most advertising, but we have become a walking target for the working class employers. It is documented that better-looking attorneys earn more than others after five years of practice, which was an effect that grew with experience (Biddle, 172). We cannot overlook the fact that it is always the most popular and most beautiful girl who becomes homecoming-queen or prom-queen. While these are possible positive effects of the "beauty myth," the negative results of female devotion to beauty undercut this value. These effects are that it costs a lot of money, it costs a lot of time, and in the long run, it costs a lot of pain.