Berger Tompkins and Rich
Language and images are usually a way to express what someone is thinking, however, language and images can often restrict our thinking in various ways. Susan Douglas, in her essay ,"Narcissism As Liberation", writes about "the great myth...that superficial appearances can be equated with a person's deepest character strengths and weaknesses"(128). The image of what a "beautiful" and what is not is an image that is constantly restricted in our minds. These restrictions come from television, movies, or many other things that people encounter. John Berger in "Ways of Seeing", proclaims that "men survey woman before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated"(46). This further shows what these restrictions do in our everyday lives. Adrienne Rich in her essay "When We Awaken: Writing As Re-Vision" gives her theories on how to free people from these restrictions mainly through "re-vision". One image that is restricted in our minds is the concept of beauty, that is seen in advertising. These restriction are put on women. The image of what beauty is, in regard to women, is perpetuated though advertising. Through the advertising and on a larger scale the media, women are told
Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated"(46). First, she says that "until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves"(550). So women must come to recognize what advertising is doing to them. Adrienne Rich also sees these restriction in another form ,writing. "(46)Here, he is illustrating to the reader his feeling on the repression of women, right when they are born. Adrienne Rich can relate to this feeling to wanted to treated like men. She felt that she never measured up to other male authors. She says that when men wrote about women and that most of them were about beautiful women "threatened with the loss of beauty, the loss of youth-the fate worse than death"(553). Douglas believes that marketers "set up standards of perfection that were cast as unattainable yet somehow within reach if only the right product were purchased"(127). Berger agrees that women are often victims of these restriction when he says, "a women's presence. This writing is similar to the advertising that Douglas talks about. This process could work for the restricted image of beauty that Berger and Douglas articulate. However, Rich gives a way to possibly break free from these restrictions. Another way that women are restricted by this image of beauty, is their yearning to pretty because they want be treated as well as men are in our society. about "perfect faces and bodies, and the psychologically , politically, and economically punitive measures taken against women who fail to be young, thin, and beautiful"(133).
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Acceptance Essays
