She got to the point that she was not strong enough to take all the pressure, so she cut herself up and offered her legs and nose up. In the poem “La Migra,” it is a whole different concept. The Mexican woman, referred to as the Mexican maid, had a different attitude. She is a strong woman who does not get intimidated very easily. While playing the game “hide and run,” she was suppose to stay quiet while the border patrol did whatever he wanted to with her.
U1A7- That’s More Than Just My Opinion Assignment #4 By: Chelsea Holmes Many women around the world are being brainwashed by the appeal of how a woman should looked, based on the media’s perspective. They show women as skinny, chesty, and cane free but when they Photoshop these women, they don’t take into consideration the feelings of women. The media’s idea of a woman’s body image can negatively impact her self-esteem. It can cause them to feel fat and ugly, result to harmful and unhealthy weight loss and it can cause suicide. The media’s idea of how a woman should look causes many women to feel fat and ugly about themselves.
Unfortunately, Josefina felt she had no say or other means to get the needed money to help release her husband from prison. She worked as a caretaker and was to serve Miss Amy, who was prejudiced against “Hispanics and Latinos” (Fuentes 2017). Miss Amy treated her poorly by calling her names and purposely putting her in situations where she was accused of wrongdoing. In one instance, Miss Amy says, “Mexicans are supposed to be lazy” (1980). She would also accuse Josefina of losing her husband’s picture.
When Lancelot is going to see the Lady of Shallot, she knows she is stepping into dangerous waters, but still goes along with it. Her image of herself turns so bad, that the basically kills herself and unhappy and lonely woman. After she is dead, Lancelot sees her and only says that “She has a lovely face,” demonstrating that he only cared about her looks and not really her inner beauty. The Lady of Shallot is a round character because she changes throughout the short story. At the beginning, she believes in herself and who she is as a person, but she is lonely.
Barbie Doll has a few main themes that can be easily recognized; the main ones that Piercy addresses are the pressures of being a female and the desperate attempts to please others. In this poem, when the subject gets older she is told all the ways that she is not beautiful, while all of her good traits are ignored. Ultimately, it shows how the pressure of trying to measure up to society’s standards can cause an end to someone’s life. The poet makes the point at the end of Barbie Doll that for some women, fulfillment might only come in death. At the beginning of the poem the girl is portrayed as a typical little girl without a care in the world.
First debuting in 1959, Barbie has mislead girls since their youth of what society perceives the perfect woman to look like. The average girl from ages 3-11 owns at least ten Barbie dolls and each hour spent playing with them, the more influence it has on them (Bennett, Saren). Yet, this is not a positive influence. Barbie is not the perfect role model for all girls. It is bad that Barbie, a 6 foot tall, 100 pound, size 0, infertile doll is possibly believed to be realistic and perfect (Bennett, Saren).
For most parents and their little girls it is just good fun. They do not take the beauty pageants seriously. For a few parents the beauty pageants become an obsession. This is when beauty pageants for children can suddenly become very harmful. “Critics of the industry warn that the stresses of competition, coupled with an extreme focus on physical appearance, can have a negative effect long before these girls will be eligible for Miss America.” (Triggs, West and Aradillas 160-168) The loss of self-esteem, the inability to show a full range of emotions, the fear of failure, the extreme focus on physical image, and the discord with or fear of parents are a few of the symptoms those little girls will suffer from.
Not winning a beauty pageant is telling children that are not good looking enough or they’re not special. They may begin to starve themselves just to have that ideal “perfect” image, this leads to life-long eating disorders. They are also put under a lot of stress trying to please everyone. Beauty pageants are killing the self esteem of the children involved. Many parents of these girls
Friends and family may see someone that is perfectly normal, beautiful even, but as far that individual woman is concerned, the image of beauty the world proliferates has become restrictive and unachievable (Fox, 1997). Women these days simply cannot see or appreciate their own beauty because they do not look the models they see on billboards and on t.v. Because women are criticized on their appearance more than men and standards of female beauty are substantially higher and more uncompromising, women are much more self-critical than men (The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, n.d.). Women are repeatedly assailed with images of the ultimate face and figure on TV, magazines, and billboards that make extraordinary good looks seem common and anything short of perfection seem strange and ugly (The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, n.d.). It has been estimated that young women now see more images of exceptionally beautiful women in one day than their mothers saw throughout their entire childhood (The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, n.d.).
The following two lines and second stanza speak of puberty and what her class mates think of her. This is a classic case where a social circle has profound impact of how young people see themselves; not for who they are, but for what their friends think of them. Further irony comes as the magic of puberty is not all magical and the only thing that changes is a girl changing into a woman with thick ties and big fat nose. In the third stanza she begins her quest for acceptance; diet, exercise, smile and wheedle. This is not who she really is and soon the pretense wears away, “Her good nature wore out.” when the real façade revealed who she was, she removed that which people dislikes about her, her nose and her legs and eventually gave up living.