Perfect Dress
Perfect Dress
The poem I chose to write this final reaction paper on is the poem entitled “Perfect Dress” by Marisa de los Santos. I chose this poem because the meaning of it seemed to just jump out at me and it was one of the few poems I thought I actually had a good grasp on. The poem is basically about a woman trying to find the ‘perfect dress.’ All throughout the poem, the author depicts the desire to hunt for this dress as being brought on by the want and desire to be like one of the gorgeous and glamorous models that are seen walking the runways and covering the front pages of magazines. One could tell the tone of this poem would, more or less, be sad. This could be deduced from the first line when the author writes “a blue confession.” Blue tends to be a color of sadness and I feel that those words were a symbol of the sad tone that was to be portrayed. In the first stanza she writes about a confession written, in ink, a journal by a student who is constantly hoping to one day just wake up and be beautiful. Things written in ink tend to not be able to be erased. This confession written in ink may be a symbol for the thoughts running through women’s minds. As much as they would like to erase the thoughts of not being content with who they are and how they look, the thoughts seem to always remain permanent in their brains. Those permanent thoughts are what lead me to my next point. Why do women feel so pressured to look this way and act that way? In the poem it is mentioned how the narrator sees a magazine offering “How to Find the Perfect Dress for that Perfect Evening” and she is immediately captivated and must know more. This is an excellent symbol of the society we live in. Magazines, ads on TV, movies, shows, basically most media, put such a great emphasis on how people, particularly women, should look. Each day we are pressured into “how to get flat abs” or “how to get silky smooth hair” to match the beautiful models that we see. There is always
The poem I chose to write this final reaction paper on is the poem entitled “Perfect Dress” by Marisa de los Santos. I chose this poem because the meaning of it seemed to just jump out at me and it was one of the few poems I thought I actually had a good grasp on. The poem is basically about a woman trying to find the ‘perfect dress.’ All throughout the poem, the author depicts the desire to hunt for this dress as being brought on by the want and desire to be like one of the gorgeous and glamorous models that are seen walking the runways and covering the front pages of magazines. One could tell the tone of this poem would, more or less, be sad. This could be deduced from the first line when the author writes “a blue confession.” Blue tends to be a color of sadness and I feel that those words were a symbol of the sad tone that was to be portrayed. In the first stanza she writes about a confession written, in ink, a journal by a student who is constantly hoping to one day just wake up and be beautiful. Things written in ink tend to not be able to be erased. This confession written in ink may be a symbol for the thoughts running through women’s minds. As much as they would like to erase the thoughts of not being content with who they are and how they look, the thoughts seem to always remain permanent in their brains. Those permanent thoughts are what lead me to my next point. Why do women feel so pressured to look this way and act that way? In the poem it is mentioned how the narrator sees a magazine offering “How to Find the Perfect Dress for that Perfect Evening” and she is immediately captivated and must know more. This is an excellent symbol of the society we live in. Magazines, ads on TV, movies, shows, basically most media, put such a great emphasis on how people, particularly women, should look. Each day we are pressured into “how to get flat abs” or “how to get silky smooth hair” to match the beautiful models that we see. There is always