The Answer of Real Beauty

This is the last monthly blog of the year...

What makes someone beautiful? How is beauty measured? Magazines, celebrities, and businesses create an image of beauty for society. Perfection is believed to be beautiful. Youthful is seen as valuable. There is make up to help erase age, and to be forever young. Dying hair is often use to hid the gray, a sign of aging. Magazines use celebrities for the front covers. Why? Because they are perfect, in other words, have so much money where they can erase the aging and forever be young and beautiful. If they have any flaws, they simply edit the picture so that the cover is flawless. People strive to be the impossible. 

Dorian Gray strives for the impossible dream of being forever young and beautiful. He is pressured by his friends who praise him for being beautiful. Basil is practically in love with him and paints a portrait of him that exposes too much of his own soul. Lord Henry tell him of the power he could have with his beauty. Even after is personality changed for the worse he still was loved by society. Why? Because he was beautiful. He had been nurtured in a way that he believes that beauty is  everything. He curses his painting to show his true, wicked soul, which in-evidently caused him to murder his ugly self.

Beauty will bring people to great depths. People will do anything to maintain their image, and would die to go back to when they were young and weren't aging. Anti-aging  (insert noun here) says it all. 

I think that beauty is within. When you are appealing to someone by your personality, you are automatically more beautiful then you every could be from the outside. Society expects so much. They do believe you need to be beautiful on the inside, as well as outside. However the outside is so much of a business now that the personality is lost. I feel that when I'm older, I will be self conscious of my again body. I won't try to reverse it though, because those people are seen as fake. Society itself is a double standard which like Dorian, will cause people to want to leave a double life and hide the outside. Only problem is Dorian portrait's curse is impossible. Impossible things are out of reach, and will cause someone to go mad trying to search for the answer of beauty.  

Responsiblity for Created Monsters

Are monsters inside us, or are they created? Do we have that kind of ruthless power inborn or do the experiences in our life develop these kinds of behavior? 

Let's look at three cases: Dr. Faustus, Dorian Gray, and Dr. Jekyll. 

Dr. Faustus sold himself to the devil. He wanted to have more knowledge and inevitably more power in his life and saw this as a way to get there. He had moments where he wanted to repent, and he had moments of what seemed to be pretending emotions of satisfaction. At the end he had a fearful repent to hopefully be forgiven for his wrong doings. 

I do not believe he was a monster, only created to be one. He was "forced" to think a certain way by Meth. and Lucifer. He was naive and because he was not strong or confident he turned to the devil. 

Dorian Gray was a perfect, beautiful person that Basil admired. He was self conscious of his looks, and instigated and made aware of the power his beauty had by Lord Henry. He killed himself and others along his journey. He was afraid of becoming old, and wanted to stay youthful forever. 

Like I said he was self conscious. He also was told constantly how beautiful he was by Basil that led him to kill a once friend. He was so wrapped up in his wants and emotions that he had no idea what he was doing. A monster was created, he was not always that way. 

And finally Dr. Jekyll was a respected doctor who was trying to separate his good from the bad. He created a "potion" where he could transform himself into Mr. Hyde until he fully became his evil side. 

His purpose was to separate the good from the bad, and inevitable became  holistically evil while doing so. He tried to warn others, and at a point knew that he lost all control. In this case the need to be different than what he was took over him by being able to transform into someone else. That is what made him a monster. 

In each of these stories, the monster was naive, and lost control of his actions. They were created. They were not born this way, which can be seen through their tiny moments of repention. They never wanted any of this to happen. So when do these "monsters" begin to take responsibility for their actions?

In the court of law, they would probably plead not guilty by insanity, which is already controversial. However some could maybe get off with involuntary manslaughter, because it was accidental, or not meaningful. But if the court doesn't buy  the whole "I didn't mean to" gig, most would probably get at least second degree murder. This would be because they had the intent, however they did not have the conscious knowledge or decision. However for the cases that killed multiple people, I'm pretty sure the court system of the U.S would not let them get off. 

The only reason we use a psychological approach is to understand why. Why did they do what they did, which is why we can say it was created by experiences and people. Psychology doesn't mean that any of it is okay. 

Finding the Balance

The happy medium between motherhood and career are battles that women had and have to fight.  Is it possible to have it all? Or do we have to choose? Woolf found this an issue when writing her essay about women and fiction and the inequality of women and men. She found that if women began with a career, their children would have not have came into existence. I think it's possible. I think the hard part would be finding yourself within the two.

Woolf gave the example of a woman named Mary Seton, and discussed her mother. She gave examples of if she had been working before she had her daughter. If she had a job, the topic of discussion would be different. Also, having a child takes time. Woolf explains that a women needs months to feed and care for the baby and then years to play with the baby. They would simply be no time for a career, because the responsibility of parenting lies fully on the mother. In Chopin's novel, The Awakening, Edna deals with a similar problem. Her husband believes, what is the use of the women if she is not caring for her children? Motherhood is a women's career.

I believe that motherhood should be part of a women's life, however if she wants to have a career she can. But that also means that the father would need to help out with the family. For both Chopin and Woolf, their pieces were written in a time where life was very traditional. A mother dealt with the children's manners and the father brought in the income. I do not find anything wrong with this. If the women wants to devote her time to her children then she is allowed. But if she would like a job then she can do that foo. I have a slightly traditional view of this issue, however if both parents agree to switch roles, then it would be solved. I do believe that the mother should be home for part of her day, as so the father. Communication is essential to who is doing what in a marriage and with parenting, especially if they both decide to have jobs.

Dual-earner families are on the rise. They outnumber breadwinner families 3-1. Also the number of persons in a family have been on a steady decline, according to the United States Department of Labor and U.S. Department of Commerce. These statistics show that our country is moving forward in a different direction. In many families both parents have jobs trying to make money, which also helps to prove Woolf's point. With dual-earner couples on the rise, there are less children being born. So is it possible for both parents to have jobs and look after the children? I hope so because I think I would like to do that. No doubt will that be more difficult, and it would request cooperation from both sides, the father and the mother. For a woman to find that balance between motherhood and career, the responsibly of both can not rest in her hands, unless she chooses one over the other with the help of the father.

Is Love in the Air?

Valentine's Day is coming closer and closer and many people ask themselves if they are in love, if love does exist. What is love and how do you know when your in love? You see commercials for jewelry stores, and chocolate. The cards and flowers begin to become more prominent in grocery stores. The United States has an idea of love, but is love universal? Can we truly understand using Cultural Relativism?
I know that I'm in love, but I don't want to be very "gushy." I can only use my experiences to understand love. I feel that when you love someone you would do anything for them. You have a respect for one another and admire everything about them and how they treat you. You are perfectly content with them and do not need anything more. Butterflies never go away. The American culture, I believe, would agree with me on this. I did grow up in it, and would have to get my ideas from somewhere. But what if we were to go to the Middle East? Would their idea of love be the same? If it even existed?
In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam is forced into a marriage. Her husband is harsh, stern, but considerate for the first week. His idea is that the woman should make the man happy. Now maybe the woman wants to make the man happy by being at his every command. That could make a women feel helpful and efficient. However Mariam did not get satisfaction and gratitude. Yet she feels jealousy towards his porn magazines when she find them in his dresser. At the moment she feels that she is not good enough. With that being said she lives for her husband and lost all sense of herself. Is our idea of love found in their house? No. There idea could be: Love is when a man wants a woman to make him happy, and a woman wants to make him happy. Using cultural relativism it is difficult to understand and decide if our idea of love is universal.
I believe it is universal. It is our instincts. However I think what you expect to feel and the goals for relationships are different. People are taught ways to feel, depending on the society you grow up in. That is all they know, and in their minds, "the way it is." Mariam is in a culture where she knows what is expected of her. Does she like it? She might not, but that is how her society works. However most Americans, including myself think "the way is it" in a relationship is love. That is the goal.

New Year of Toasts and Tea

Happy New Year! "New year, new you," is the common saying to describe that it is a new beginning for people... Or those who see the new year as an opportunity, including myself. Society views  the New Year to reflect on what is  important to us. In our world, it is so easy to get caught up in materialistic things, to the point that we can not find ourselves anymore. That is why on New Year's Day and for the following two weeks people eat healthy, go to the gym, and get a new look. It is a time to see what is truly important to us, and the things that we should not worry about too much.  I like looking back and reflecting about the past year, seeing how far I have come, the things I did, the things I wish I did not. I use this as a starting point for my new year. I realize what I can, can not  and should, should not do. 
Personally, 2014 was a growing and changing year. I became more driven about my future, more mature, and more professional. I also had a love life (haha) and remained close to my family and friends. But if I look closely at everything I did, I truly did everything. From being in the musical and a field hockey clinic in early spring, to organizing conditioning practices, to summer vacations, college visits, volunteering at Longwood, working, summer work, spending time with friends and family, to field hockey, more college visits, school in the fall, to chorus competitions, applications, Masquerade Ball and Cinderellla in the winter, the year was continuous and never ending. However I liked it. But at the same time, I spread myself too thin; I didnt have the effort --I could make the three hour break in between work and practices, to give enough attention to my friends and especially my boyfriend. By no means would I devote my entire life to my boyfriend, but I found I need to not spread myself too thin, and have the effort to enjoy the little things that made me happy. 
"There will be time, there will be time 
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift a drop a question on your plate; 
Time for you and time for me, 
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions, 
Before the takings of toast and tea," says Prufrock in his Lovesong. He expresses that there's so much time, yet we do not have time for the simplest things. He talking about society as a whole here, and how he is trapped within it. Prufrock's love song needs a New Year to understand what is really important. They need to see that with all the time they have to make time for the little things. Often people think they have a lot of time on their hands, so they add something to their schedule. However then they miss dinner with the family, which is how I took this passage of the Lovesong. New Years is a time to really reflect on what is important, so make that resolution count and make time for the "takings of toast and tea."