A Women's Beauty

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of high-fat milk every day so that they are someday obese and can attract a husband. While in Ghana men want to be short and consider height a curse, compared to the perspective of the American people where we want men to be tall. Sontag uses worldly comparisons to highlight the different views of beauty in each culture. Her use of the Greeks’ view on beauty in the start of the article builds her credibility and brings the reader’s attention. Going further into the article she builds its foundation, when she talks about men being called beautiful in French and Italian, showing that Christianity has not totally split beauty’s admiration in some cultures.

Sontag starts the article with the Greek’s view on beauty but she ends it with a shoutout to the individuals to save beauty from the women and for the women. I found it very interesting to see the transitions that took place throughout the article, how after each paragraph, the subject of beauty was narrowing right down to the individual reader. In the first part of the article, Sontag talks about the differentiations of beauty between men and women. She further goes on to state this by her word choices such as “superficial enchantment”, where she describes beauty as a trap and a beautiful women is coming to seduce and trap the knight. In the second part of the article, where Sontag begins with “For the ideal of beauty is administered as a form of self-oppression”, here she is narrowing down the views of beauty towards women themselves. She goes on to describe how women are obsessed with looking perfect, that their views of beauty are being oppressed by the views of the society they live in. Sontag’s word choice at the end of the article make a powerful impact on the reader when she says “There should be a way of saving beauty from women – and for them”, this sentence directly talks to the reader and asks them not to discriminate beauty between men and women, especially not associate beauty with just women.

I’m in agreement with Sontag’s views of beauty being discriminated between and women. This article was written in Vogue magazine in 1975, during that time beauty was seen as more associated with women than men and nothing much has changed in today’s society. At that time beauty was based on a woman’s look and a man’s actions, a woman’s beauty was seen in separate parts of the body as man’s body was seen has a whole, and it was a woman’s duty to make herself look beautiful no matter what authority she held. Forty – two years later, I see these differences being held true to illustrate beauty and the role it plays for men and women.

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