Analysis Of The Ugly Truth About Beauty By Dave Barry

In today’s modern culture, many men and women suffer from a variety of psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety and anorexia. Many of these psychological disorders can be prevented if society did not have preset standards for us to follow. For example, our society from an early age tells us that all women have to have a slim waist and be curvy. The controversial issues amongst women and their outward appearance can be found in “The Ugly Truth About Beauty” by Dave Barry as well as “The Pitfalls of Plastic surgery” Camille Paglia. In these two essays both writers put an emphasis on how the media often demoralize women by having preset standards of beauty, that threaten the female identity. Dave Barry’s comical stance is based on the idea that the media attempts to brainwash women at an early age to achieve an impossible standard of beauty. In particular, Barry uses extreme sarcasm to justify the extreme measures and time women waste trying to achieve this preset standard of beauty. According to Barry, there is a huge difference in attitudes of beauty in men and women. Barry states that “most men form an opinion of how they look in the seventh grade, and stick to it for the rest of their
she exudes how plastic surgery is one of the greatest issue amongst modern day women. According to Paglia, “the ideal has become the bouncy Barbie doll or simpering nymphet” (693). there is an automatic pressure placed on women to fit into the “cookie cutter shape” slim and curvy. When society expects everyone to look like a like, it creates a low sense of self that leads to plastic surgery. Paglia laments the standards of modern day Hollywood that “expects middle-aged actors to look twenty or even thirty years younger than they are” (692). this is very impractical and probably unattainable for most