Race Class and Gender
WHAT ARE YOU TO DO WHEN LOOKING LIKE YOU DO IS NOT BEAUTIFUL?
Beautiful. Everyone wants to look beautiful, but who determines what beautiful is? Being ugly is a problem that everyone fears. Getting under the knife on a surgical table is an answer to the problem. Eating an apple and only an apple, once a day is the other answer to the problem. The problem of not looking beautiful is slowly wiping out the naturally beautiful men and women. What are you to do when looking like you do, is not beautiful? A great amount of people go to this extent because of what influence them the most – parents, boys/girls, lovers, and friends – tell them. Someone who does not have the crease in her eyelids, someone who hates their fat chin, or someone who wants a thin body for Spring Break, goes through this phase of false impression of what beauty really is. In “Finding My Eye-Dentity”, Olivia Chung, a Korean female, was being pressured to get a surgery on her eyelids to look more like a ‘beautiful Korean’. “You know your aunt? She used to have beany eyes just like you! She used to put on white or black eyeliner very morning to make them look BIG. Then she went to Korea and got the surgery done. Now look! She looks so much better! Don’t you want it done? I would do it …” (p485). Many females are in the need to perfect their bodies, similar to the models and actresses they see on the televisions and magazines. Olivia thought about going with her mother’s suggestion, but wanted to see if there was another way of getting the crease in her eyelids. Magazines such as Seventeen or CosmoGIRL magazine persuade their readers that you must have a certain look to be beautiful. Proclamations made like this, are the reasons why females strive to modify everything about them. Although, Olivia almost went through with her mother’s suggestion, she did not. On the other hand, Olivia kept her non-crease eyelids the way they are. “I remember feeling a confused hurt, realizing that I looked
Beautiful. Everyone wants to look beautiful, but who determines what beautiful is? Being ugly is a problem that everyone fears. Getting under the knife on a surgical table is an answer to the problem. Eating an apple and only an apple, once a day is the other answer to the problem. The problem of not looking beautiful is slowly wiping out the naturally beautiful men and women. What are you to do when looking like you do, is not beautiful? A great amount of people go to this extent because of what influence them the most – parents, boys/girls, lovers, and friends – tell them. Someone who does not have the crease in her eyelids, someone who hates their fat chin, or someone who wants a thin body for Spring Break, goes through this phase of false impression of what beauty really is. In “Finding My Eye-Dentity”, Olivia Chung, a Korean female, was being pressured to get a surgery on her eyelids to look more like a ‘beautiful Korean’. “You know your aunt? She used to have beany eyes just like you! She used to put on white or black eyeliner very morning to make them look BIG. Then she went to Korea and got the surgery done. Now look! She looks so much better! Don’t you want it done? I would do it …” (p485). Many females are in the need to perfect their bodies, similar to the models and actresses they see on the televisions and magazines. Olivia thought about going with her mother’s suggestion, but wanted to see if there was another way of getting the crease in her eyelids. Magazines such as Seventeen or CosmoGIRL magazine persuade their readers that you must have a certain look to be beautiful. Proclamations made like this, are the reasons why females strive to modify everything about them. Although, Olivia almost went through with her mother’s suggestion, she did not. On the other hand, Olivia kept her non-crease eyelids the way they are. “I remember feeling a confused hurt, realizing that I looked