A Women's Beauty

A Woman’s Beauty

Susan Sontag begins the article with the description of a woman’s beauty during the Greek era. Even the Greeks expected inner beauty to match with outer beauty; she uses Socrates as an example. People expected Socrates to be as handsome as he was intelligent, wise and honorable but because he was ugly, they didn’t follow his views. Under the influence of Christianity beauty was split and attributed to only one of the sexes which was different from the Greek views of beauty attributed to everyone. To say a person is beautiful is to associate them with being feminine, so when a man is given this compliment it is demeaning. In today’s world beauty identifies a female with caring about how one looks and a male with caring about what one is and does. Another aspect of beauty that women are taught is to see their body in parts rather than as a whole which are judged and analyzed to nothing less than perfection. When it comes to men, their bodies are viewed as a whole, so on an ideal good looking man some small imperfections are desired. Men have many powers that show their masculinity but for women beauty is their only power and the only one they are encouraged to achieve. As said in the article by Sontag “it is not the power to do but the power to attract” and it is the duty of a woman to preen herself to look the most beautiful no matter what authority she holds. I strongly agree with Sontag’s description of beauty and believe that today’s society judges both sexes, women more than men, based on what is on the outside than what is on the inside.

I asked some friends about their opinion on what is beauty to them and the most common first response that I got was that beauty to them is the physical appearance that attracts them to the opposite sex. A friend of mine, who is a guy, said that men are said to be handsome and dashing in our society and women are considered beautiful because they have more fashion and accessories as compared to men. Coming back to Sontag, this view totally agrees with her saying that beauty is differentiated between men and women. Women have the all the accessories that helps them adorn the different parts of their body, as they are taught to see their bodies as such. Women take fashion to decorate the different parts of their body, to boost their beauty. Beauty is a thing that is associated with women, like my friend said; females have more fashion and accessories that help them enhance their beauty, while men don’t need the help of materialistic things to look handsome since they are viewed beautiful (dashing) as a whole. In a way beauty is a thing that correlates with women whenever and wherever they are.

There are many things that if both genders do, one will be judged. Both sexes are held to different standards and aren’t judged alike. For example, how often woman have to get beauty makeovers compared to how often a man needs to get a makeover and how different they are to each other. In the essay, Sontag explains “To be called beautiful is thought to name something essential to woman’s character and concerns, (In contrast to men – whose whole essence is to be strong, or effective, or competent.)”. Here, Sontag explains how exactly the definition of beauty is different for each gender. In each of the paragraphs that Sontag writes, she always compares and the contracts beauty between women and men. Whether it’s the differentiation between feminism and masculinity and how beauty defines each or talking about beauty viewed in parts or as a whole for women and men.

Throughout her article, Sontag discusses the differences of beauty for men and women and how it’s associated more towards women. I found this a bit weird because earlier in the essay she explains how in other countries you can call a man beautiful and it would be ok; but in this country you must say handsome. I read in my psychology textbook that women in Mauritanian are forced to drink five gallon

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