Pet Shop Boys and Beauty
Success & Jealousy in Beauty Beauty, written by Jane Martin in the mid nineteen hundreds, is an ironic play about two successful women, Bethany and Carla. Both women were the same age yet complete opposites. They also had completely different personalities and were unhappy with their lives. Martin casted and characterized them this way to illustrate a few themes. The drama was mainly centered on the theme that no one is ever happy unless they get their wishes granted. However, in these two women’s cases, getting what they wanted caused them to realize there is nothing wrong with being different. These two themes can be seen through the two character’s success, jealousy, and a genie. 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. Jealousy is very noticeable in Beauty, especially when it comes to Bethany. Bethany was extremely jealous of, “Carla because she looked beautiful. She represented that beautiful person that knocks a man across a room