Lakeisha Pettyjohn Professor ProsnakEng Comp IIFebruary 7, 2017Beauty The internal conflict or struggle to be beautiful and trying to fulfill the illusion that being physically beautiful is more socially accepted as being beautiful.
When in all actuality beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is more than a physical appearance. Bethany in this drama wanted to be like her friend Carla a beautiful model and Carla wanted to be more like her friend Bethany a successful intellectual. Each wanting something that the other already possesses. Carla finds a genie lamp and is given three wishes to make. The first is for money, the second is a cure for her uncle, and the third is to be beautiful. According to Bethany being pretty isn’t enough she needs to be beautiful to be noticed.
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“Pretty is the minor leagues of beautiful. Pretty is what people discover about you after they know you. Beautiful is what knocks them out across the room. Pretty you get called a couple times a year; beautiful is twenty-four hours a day. Beauty is the real deal. You are the center of any moment of your life. People stare.
Men flock” (881). Bethany believes that if she were more beautiful she would get noticed more by the opposite sex.From Carla’s point of view being beautiful is not all it seems to be. “I can’t have a conversation without men coming up to me.
I have no privacy. I get hassled on the street. They start pressuring me from the beginning. Half the time, it never occurs to them to start with a conversation. Smart guys like you. The good guys, the smart guys are scared to death of me. I’m surrounded by male bimbos who think a preposition is when you go to school away from home.
I have no women friends except you” (881). What Carla is trying to tell her is that smart intelligent men are afraid to speak to her for fear of rejection and she doesn’t have many women friends because of the jealousy and envy of her being so beautiful. She’s trying to tell her that being beautiful is not as glamorous as she thinks it is.
After Bethany made the third and final wish to be beautiful. She was beautiful and smart and the first thing she wanted to do was to meet a man. Which would have been ok if she were in her own body. In the end they realized they both wanted what each other possessed.
Carla was unhappy with her beauty because people don’t take her seriously. She wanted long term relationships, she wanted to be able to hold conversations, she wanted to be able to walk down the street without being bothered. Bethany wanted the beauty because she wanted the attention that came along with being beautiful.
Both of them got what they wanted but at what cost? The play had some humor, sarcasm, and wit. Neither of the characters thought about how they would feel if the tables were turned. They both seemed to be miserable with their lives. They never spoke about what qualities they posses besides physical appearances.
Being beautiful is more than looks. True beauty comes from within and while yes being nice to look at never hurts, what about personality, sense of humor, or just being an all around good person. Those qualities alone can make a person beautiful. People are always trying to fit in to society’s misconstrued mold of what is beautiful with the magazine ads, commercials and movie stars. What society isn’t showing is that people come in all shapes and sizes and each one is equally as beautiful. Beauty comes from with. Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder.
What Carla saw as beauty and what Bethany saw as beauty was the whole conflict of the play. In Bethany’s case she should be careful of what she wished for. She may get more than she bargained for.
