Fiction Documented Essay Sample
Teacher: Sis. Raiyan Hossain
The birthmark tackles a very important theme, the theme of body image. The standards and
pressure put on Body image is one of the most destructive detrimental aspects of today’s
societies. Body image is not one’s assessment of their own body, rather it is your assessment of
how society sees your body. The toxic unattainable standards of the perfect body that society so
strongly stresses is one of the major causes to unhealthy lifestyles and extremely damaging to the
mental, physical, and social health of people.
The society we live in is intoxicated with a series of unattainable unhealthy value. A study was
conducted at Bradley Hospital, the nation's first psychiatric hospital for children and adolescents
on the issue of body image and its effect on people. The results found that one third of the
hospitals adolescents patients had body image concerns and were also suffering from severe
illnesses in multiple vital aspects more that other patients in the same age . patients who suffered
from BDD had significantly higher levels of depression that patients who did not suffer from
these issues. BDD stands for Body dysmorphic disorder which is a form of mental illness that
negatively targets ones evaluation of his/her own body and tampers with how one sees their
physical self. or other body image illnesses. Most victims suffer from false judgement and
impaired evaluation; they see themselves different from how they really look. Body image and
depression and eating disorders in most cases come hand in hand and fuel each other to deplete
individuals’ perception of themselves.
Society’s unhealthy obsession with weight and body image is what is essentially killing the
hearts and minds of the generation. The constant bombarding of perfect body ratios and weight
over the media penetrates the psyche of people and shatter their confidence. Aside from that,
society creates flaws that do not even exist; aspects of a person that once were scene as an
element of beauty is now being registered as unattractive. Before the stressing on being
unhealthily skinny and ridiculously malnourished, being healthy and medium weighted was seen
as attractive. As the dynamics of the media changed, so did the society and that is when these
unhealthy standards creeped in. Anorexia has the highest fatality rate of any mental illness.
It is estimated that about 4% of anorexia victims die from of the disease. Aside from anorexia
which in many cases is triggered by negative body image, eating disorders are a daily struggle
for 10 million females and 1 million males in the United States. Statistics show that Four out of
ten individuals have either personally experienced an eating disorder or know someone who has.
In the birthmark, Alymer could be compared to today’s society and media. He diverts all his
energy to the one imperfect aspect of his wife, her birthmark. Georgiana’s birthmark was seen as
an aspect of her beauty to everyone around her other than her husband. He himself says that
everything else about his wife is perfect, yet he chooses to hang onto this one ‘defect’. At first,
Georgiana is content with herself and her body. Her birthmark was what made herself and she
was content with it. She grows irritated and discontent with her birthmark that she once accepted
when she sees the effect it has on her husband. Alymer’s visible irritation at the birthmark makes
Georgiana hate it herself. She grows from being content with herself to hating the aspect of her
birthmark. The birthmark was an element of her beauty, which Alymer turns into a weapon to
kill her. Alymer created nonexistent flaws and made Georgiana hate her birthmark. He starts
defining the standards of beauty for her which leads to her subconscious discontent attitude.
Society an the media likewise has similar negative impacts on the lives of its victims.
Perfection in this planet is unattainable; no matter how hard one tries, perfection is out of our
league. Getting near perfection is possible, however attaining ultimate perfection is not. Each
person and creation has its specific form and identity, tampering with it to make it perfect will
make you lose it all together. You can never attain 100% perfection. Even with plastic surgery,
you may get the look you want but at the end, youre perfect but attained that perfection by
unnatural cosmic surgery. That itself is an aspect of imperfection. Regardless of what one does,
imperfection is inevitable and it is what keeps nature going. The overstressing on body image
and beauty standards not only goes against the nature of how the world works but by setting such
unattainable unhealthy standards, people are emotionally attacked. They feel inadequate as if
they fall short to the world. This mindset leads to serious consequences and results in suicide,
mental disorders, isolation, and self harm.
Word count: 810