A Woman’s Beauty: Put Down or Power Source

A Woman’s Beauty In “A Woman’s Beauty: Put Down or Power Source?” an essay by Susan Sontag, A lot of questions and points are put up that really make you think if society is fair or not. Sontag does a good job of making the reader question the point and realize how unfair society is today. In this essay, Sontag compares how society views men and women before now and shows the differences between them. Sontag does a good job of using examples to prove her point that society is very unfair today against women. In the essay, Sontag explains how she believes that women have an obligation to be beautiful and that they actually consider how they look to be more important that who they really are inside. She mentions how fashion and media both have taken outer beauty way too far for women (Magazines, TV, movies etc.). Woman in society nowadays are pressured by other women on how they look thanks to these high standards that society expects from them.“For close to two centuries it has become a convention to attribute beauty to only one of the two sexes: the sex which however fair is always second. Associating beauty with women has put beauty even further on the defensive, morally.” (154) from that quote I learned that the beauty aspect was only based on one gender (females) and for some reason it had to be the gender that is less valued. Sontag did a good job sharing with the readers how exactly men are compared to women. Sontag also compares men and women and how different we judge each other. Woman judge each other based on how they look, while on the other hand, men do not because if they do, they are considered unmanly to judge another man on looks. Sontag also compares how a person was looked at as a whole before and today. She says “Several thousand years later, we are more wary of the enhancements of beauty. We not only split off with the greatest facility – the “inside” (character intellect) from the “outside” (looks); but we are actually surprised when