Preview

Summary Of Beauty By Jane Martin

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1779 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Summary Of Beauty By Jane Martin
Many people struggle with their self-worth, and everyday is a battle to try to look beautiful and please society's expectations. Robert Tornambe, a New York City plastic surgeon, took a look at what women do to beautify themselves, including a 55-year-old woman, Cindy Jackson. Cindy holds the World Record for 55 cosmetic surgery procedures performed on her body. She stated that she wants herself to look better and is on a quest for beauty. She believes that to achieve the beauty standards of art and the society, plastic surgery is the only way (Tornambe 1). This story shows how far some people go to achieve society’s standards of beauty. We also see how caught up people get in how the world wants them to look in the short play, Beauty, by Jane Martin. …show more content…
The play revolves around two friends, a beautiful catalog model, Carla, and a hard-working accountant, Bethany. Bethany encounters a genie who grants her three wishes. Her last wish leads to a discussion with Carla about wanting good looks. Carla tries to convince Bethany that she is pretty with her brains and success in her career, whereas the only thing Carla has is the physical beauty. But, Bethany wants more than to just be pretty, she wants to be beautiful. In the end we see both of the friends want what the other has, and they explore the frustrations of beauty and success in life (Martin 1035-1039). These are just a couple examples of how people get caught up in how society defines beauty and how they try to match it. But, people should not evaluate their self-worth based on society’s expectations of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The play, “Beauty”, explains the story about two foolish girls, fighting over a magical wish to receive a feature that each other has. Although it is heart wrenching that each of these girls are begging to change their features, it shows us the play’s underlying message; We will always have problems that will affect us. The author of the story, Jane Martin, shows us this simple message along with a comical aspect.…

    • 419 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Allison Avery is one of the three Avery girls. Her older sister Quinn is beautiful, smart, and an all around good character. Her younger sister Phoebe is popular, innocent, and always happy. While Allison is just interesting looking, doesn’t try in school, and has only one best friend, Jade. Allison Avery Is a 9th grader trying to fit in, in a suburban town that she hates. Its to perfect for her, and everyone there has to be perfect too. Alison isn’t perfect and will never be perfect, so this annoys her a great deal. Jane, is perfect to, she’s a great student, and she pretty too.…

    • 1743 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The useful may be trusted to further itself, for many produce it and no one can do without it; but the beautiful must be specially encouraged, for few can present it, while yet all have need of it. Beauty does not lie in the face. It lies in the harmony between a person and his or her industry. Beauty is expression. Lucy Grealy’s book Autobiography of a Face takes a deep look at the societal stereotypes and perceptions. At the end of her book she writes “Society is no help. It tells us again and again that we can most be ourselves by acting and looking like someone else , only to leave our original faces behinds to turn in ghosts that will inevitably resent and haunt us” (pg. 222). This passage is in the conclusions; because through her experience she was face with the social and cultural expectation Grealy’s life after her cancer was filled taunts and stares from strangers. These judgments made Grealy very concerned with the perception of how others saw her.…

    • 1618 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Uglies By Scott Westerfled

    • 1083 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Life isn’t about impressing others, but it’s about impressing yourself, proving yourself wrong, making yourself proud, and lastly live life to impress yourself, not others, because in the end of the day you have to wake up with yourself every morning, with the same flaws, and the same imperfections, so learn to be thankful for what you have rather than wishing for other things. Life isn’t about money, or how much money you make, but it’s about how many lives you’ve changed. Wishes come true, but in reality, hard work is wishing, your wishes never come true, you make them come true. In this book, Tally takes her beauty for granted; she always insults herself, calls herself ugly and never accepts the true beauty she has. She wishes every single day that she was a pretty; she hides herself from the public sometimes, because she can’t stand her face. She constantly reminds herself that there is a pretty side to the world, and she isn’t in it, nevertheless she is included…

    • 1083 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    She believes that plastic surgery should only be a right when reconstructive because aesthetic surgery, more often than not, is problematic within the media. “The people in media have a large influence in other people’s lives.” Although we may not explicitly chase after these body types,” she says “we allow for these images to subconsciously tell us that is what we also want to look like.” The two young women, through their comments, seem to disagree with a point of view that Edmonds brings up regarding cosmetic surgery having a direct relationship to health. For these young women, there appears to be a disconnect in terms of aesthetic surgery and health. Plastic surgery, only when considered reconstructive, appears to serve a social purpose. On the other hand, most people that Edmonds spoke with seemed to think that both aesthetic and reconstructive surgery are a part of health, explaining why most public hospitals offer it for free even when the funds are allocated only for reconstructive surgery. Surgeons have made an argument that since cosmetic surgery can be psychological, it coincides with mental health and something worth treating (Edmonds…

    • 1056 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    “That is the best part of beauty, which a picture cannot express,” Francis Bacon observes in his “Essay on the Subject.” And yet for centuries, we’ve attempted again and again to define beauty from social, cultural and religious perspectives. But in spite of establishing numerous theoretical definition, we continue to try for a substantial, solid and material structure to define women’s beauty. “Attitudes toward beauty are entwined with our deepest conflicts surrounding flesh and spirit,” Harvard’s Nancy Etcoff wrote in her article, “Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty.” Indeed, “beauty is a complex beast surrounded by our equally complex attitudes”, and “The Myth of the Latin…

    • 1011 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Cyrano Exam

    • 342 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Beauty in this play hides the characters personalities in ways that slowly reveal themselves throughout the play. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, yet everyone has one common form of beauty inside them. Beauty is anything and…

    • 342 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    turning point for her to be who she always dreamed of was in 1988 after she inherited some money. She was able to change herself with a help of the plastic surgeries. She has undergone 52 plastic surgeries to attain what she perceived to be a perfect image or physique (Cindy Jackson’s Website). The numerous plastic surgeries have had a positive effect on a social self and self-presentation.…

    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Pet Shop Boys and Beauty

    • 986 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Bethany and Carla experienced success in Beauty. Carla was a famous, “beautiful catalogue model that was going to become a big time model soon after speaking with Ralph Lauren” (Martin 735). On the other hand, Bethany, the smart one, “received a $40,000 job offer straight out of college. She also published several short stories” (735). Carla was characterized as the perfect and beautiful success story, while Bethany was characterized as the ugly screw-up. However, neither person was happy in their respective positions. Carla was always annoyed, “and always hung by her fingernails in modeling. She felt like she had zero privacy, and guys would hassle her on the street and pressure her from the beginning of a relationship. She never was able to have a long relationship” (736). Likewise, Bethany did not see herself as a success story because, “she did not see herself as a beautiful individual” (736). They both envied each other’s success and looks. This alone shows the reader that the characters were very jealous of each other’s lives.…

    • 986 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the essay of “There Is No Unmarked Woman”, Deborah Tannen explains it best through the statement that “There is no unmarked woman” (Tannen 412). No matter what hairstyle, clothes, shoes, or style a woman may choose to wear, every one of her decisions will convey a meaning to the public. “If a woman’s clothing is tight or revealing…it sends a message…If her clothes are not sexy, that too sends a message…” (Tannen 412). There are even instances where the clothes are not the cause of criticism, for a woman may be criticized upon her genetic features. As written in the poem “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercg, a little girl grows up healthy and intelligent, but because other people deemed her as physically inadequate by having “a great big nose and fat legs”, the girl is coerced into change, and not anything like a difference in wardrobe, but permanent change with cosmetic surgery (Piercg 378). Such an occurrence is not far from reality for there are women who will do whatever it takes to be deemed as conventionally…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Manufacturing Beauty

    • 552 Words
    • 3 Pages

    After so many operations, she has come to believe that beauty is on the outside, and she looks for any way necessary to achieve the look of her ideal, an imaginary person. The flaws that she sees in herself causes her self-esteem to be unusually low to almost non-existent; this combination of low self-esteem and unrealistic ideal leads to her wanting more of a Barbie doll look, further compounding her lack of self-esteem. With all of the cosmetic surgeries she has undergone, Cindy Jackson has presented herself as a success story and is helping to advertise cosmetic procedures that help enhance a person’s physical beauty.…

    • 552 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis

    • 1431 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Raina Kelley covers society's issues and cultural controversies for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.’s. In her article “Beauty Is Defined, and Not By You” aims to convince her readers that women success or not is not depends on beauty. “When I’m on m deathbed, I hope to be smiling in satisfaction about all I accomplished, not that I made it to 102 without any cellulite.” One of her goals is to remain all girls do not get influence by this society, just be brave and continue to reject that beauty is the only way to get ahead. Kelley used personal experiences, facts and examples, also counter argument to create a convincing argument.…

    • 1431 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Beauty in all of its intricate aspects, can be misinterpreted, judged, and crushed to its very core for the same reasons it was once praised. Society diminishes the prominence of beauty, while simultaneously inflicting pressure on the eradication of its imperfections. Women, nowadays, rely on more than just water, soap, and self-confidence to fabricate the mask society deems as pragmatic, and truly necessary. Although the misconception of the physical qualities possessing the upper level in the hierarchical scale of beauty has blindsided millions, there is time remaining to instill the concepts of authentic beauty, according to the article by Nicole James. Knowledge does not necessarily amplify wisdom, and therefore despite the exponentially…

    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Winnie Harlow is not pretty enough to be the face of brands because her black and white skin, Serena Williams is an awarded athlete but she is too manly. A woman’s worth always comes back to what she looks like. As most of us probably think, this should definitely not be the case. A woman can be beautiful, but that does not define her. Not to be too pessimistic, we are moving forward as a society. Many people defended Serena Williams, like JK Rowling and others. Girls look up to Winnie, and they learn about how to accept themselves however they look. Her fans even do makeup tutorials tribute to her. As said, the media is also putting out more diverse images of beauty, like the Lane Bryant “I am no angel” campaign. This campaign paints curvy women as just as valuable as beautiful as skinny women. It is important to see both the progress and set backs we have had as a society concerning the standards of beauty. We are growing and learning to accept the diverse beauty present in the world, but in some sense, are still too focused on a woman’s beauty. In the end, we are all beautiful – in different ways, in similar ways – but our beauty does not define us, and we should not let…

    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    With popular culture setting the norms for society women are left at a large disadvantage as far as how they are viewed and treated in society. As stated in the lecture “These sources have created many different cultural norms and expectations as well as have affected sexuality and sexual behavior. These sources have dictated many gender expectations and have subjugated women in many aspects of social life.” (Reali, 2017) In popular culture beauty among women is one of the most romanticized topics.…

    • 1730 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays