Response Paper of a Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?

Response Paper of A Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?

1. “It was principally the influence of Christianity……By limiting excellence (virtus in Latin) to moral virtue only; Christianity set beauty adrift–as an alienated, arbitrary, superficial enchantment. And beauty has continued to lose prestige.” I think this passage is very significant, because there was an old saying in China “The beauty of inside is the real beauty, nobody could keep a beautiful outside forever.” And I agreed with that beauty had been adrift as an alienated, arbitrary, superficial enchantment, in fact, sometimes when I heard about the word “beauty”, it sounded like a satire.

2. “‘Handsome’ is the masculine equivalent of —and refusal of—a compliment which has accumulated certain demeaning overtones, by being reserved for women only.” “Women are the beautiful sex—to the detriment of the notion of beauty as well as of women.” In this passage I found that fair could not be exist between Women’s beauty and Men’s handsome. As the author said, women are the beautiful sex, and we would not use the adjective word “beautiful” to describe a man. Why not? God is fair to everyone, woman is not the only gender who has beautiful faces, but also man can be beautiful too. Beauty should not has the gender discrimination.

3. “It is not, of course, the desire to be beautiful that is wrong but the obligation to be—or to try. What is accepted by most women as a flattering idealization of their sex is a way of making women feel inferior to what they actually are—or normally grow to be. For the ideal of beauty is administered as a form of self-oppression. Women are taught to see their bodies in parts, and to evaluate each part separately.” In recent years, face lifting became more and more popular around the world. Women always want to pursue perfect beauty, so there were some women changed their bodies’ parts as very similar to some super star. I don’t against face lifting, but I think people who desire perfect appearance they ignored the nature beauty of themselves. Nature is a kind of beauty.

4. “To preen, for a woman, can never be just a pleasure. It is also a duty. It is her work…….she is always under pressure to confess that she still works at being attractive. But in so far as she is keeping up as one of the Fair Sex, she brings under suspicion her very capacity to be objective, professional, authoritative, and thoughtful.” The society evaluates women by beauty, so beauty became a duty and a job of women. How lamentable it is! Aren’t there some intelligent women also have the beauty? Women are not only taught by the desires in their heart, but also they are forced by the public gaze and the society. Do women have any other choices? No, they don’t. They are trained to live like that. Human beings paid too much attention on beauty, the appearance.

5. “But to get out of the trap requires that women get some critical distance from the excellence and privilege which is beauty, enough distance to see how much beauty itself has been abridged in order to prop up the mythology of the “feminine.” This passage told us that women are not limited to pursue beauty, but we should to pursue it very objectively, try to keep the suitable distance with the excellence and privilege, so we can keep our nature beauty, keep ourselves.