It Is Your Life You Choose

Orozco1

George Orozco

Professor Wills

Composition 100

September 19th, 2012

It is Your Life You Choose

Now a day you have to get plastic surgery or buy products in order to be considered beautiful. The media promotes unnatural distortions of the body. Women take the most abuse from television then men. Women are forced to think about what is beauty and if they think they are. Women turn to money to make them look like people they see on TV. My argument is that women need to see beauty in a new light and woman need to draw the line somewhere. Both Wolf and Paglia strongly support the idea of beauty needs to change.

In this image plastic surgery comes into play. This is a before and after photo of Victoria Beckham. Before her hair was brown and now it is a dirty blonde. Her lips have changed and even wearing a different lip gloss. Her eyebrows are even thinner than before. In the before photo she was showing no teeth and now in the after she is. May be she got stuff done to her teeth or got them whitened. Bottom line she looks like a different person that goes with one of points that Paglia trying to make.

Paglia says that “Good surgery discovers and reveals personality; bad surgery obscures or distorts it” (608). Plastic surgery can drastically change a person from their body to their personality. I can see that Victoria Beckham looks like one of those cases. Plastic surgery can change someone life but at what cost. This is a famous person may be she can afford it. What about us regular folk. A good surgery can bring out good in a person. If a woman was concerned about her weight or felt insecure. It could her them get passed those feelings.Other cases could be a bad surgery that distorts their bodies. A bad surgery could possibly bring out a bad quality in a person.

This image is supposed to be promoting natural beauty. This girl is already wearing way too much make up. On top of that she is putting on some beauty cream. It is showing you have to put on all these products just to look beautiful. They are trying to make it more natural with the leaf in the background. Women can look just as good without make up or creams. On the other hand she is not using plastic surgery. It is not as harmful or as expensive. The girl in this photo her nails are done. This photo could even be photo shopped, which it most likely is because of the leaf. Also her skin looks really soft. She has these bright straight teeth. You hear it all the time in the media promoting that white smile. This photo can be tied in with the beauty myth.

Naomi Wolf came up with a theory called the beauty myth and how images of beauty are used against woman. In this image they may be talking about natural beauty, but at the same time they are setting the bar. Setting a standard on how a woman should look. Women may think I need to buy these products so I can look that way. These products like cream and make up are expensive. Wolf makes a point by saying “If women no longer think this way…” (8). Women wouldn’t think this way if the media didn’t put out that kind of message. Media has a big influence to what is beauty. Normal people look at celebrities and wish I could look like that. Ultimately the women have the power to choose what is right and wrong. Wolf says that “You have the power to take that freedom further still” (8).

As you can see this is an image of plastic surgery gone wrong or just too much plastic surgery. This woman looks fake, almost like a person you see in a wax museum. She looks like a life sized plastic Barbie. The lips on this person are huge. The injections have blown up her lips like a balloon. Looks like a definite nose job to me. Her face doesn’t even seem like it moves. No emotional expirations could possible come from that face. Her bleach blonde hair looks damaged and burnt. Hair could have been damaged ether from the bleach or from the hot iron. She looks like she has had a tan. It is the new hip thing now days to go get sprayed tanned or sunbathing. Her eye brows are so thin that, it almost looks like she has none. The heavy eye makeup tells me she a drama queen. I know this woman is an older when so she could try to be looking younger. She is going at it in all the wrong ways. She doesn’t look younger at all. She could be heading to a downfall later on in life.

This would be a case of a pitfall that Paglia was trying to get across. She said “mutilation is in the eye of the beholder” (307). It is true what she says because you can do whatever u want to do with your body as long as you have the money. You might not think you look bad but other people might. Once you go down that road there might be no turning back. I am pretty sure plastic surgery can be reversed. It could have downfalls and side effects. Paglia also goes on to say how, “The facial mask should not be frozen or robotic” (608). This woman’s face looks very frozen. Your facial expressions make up who you are as a person. It sets you different from other people. No one makes the same facial expressions when they are mad or sad.

Images are just an image it just depends what you make of them. It depends what you do with those images that counts. The media can push all this stuff down your throat, but it is up to you to decide how to take action. It is up to women to draw the line. How you see yourself as a person. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.