Kim Phung Pham
Seminar 126G
March 29, 2010
Journal # 7
Insight and outer values
Beauty has no definition to describe what it means but there are two ways approaching
this concept. The first method is the outer appearance of a person that determines whether she is
beautiful or not. The other approaching is the insight beauty or what people called good
personality and charming characteristic. In this society where there are so many different cultures
and senses, people’s way of interpreting external beauty is being affected greatly. For example,
people in American and other European countries consider white, blond hair, and blue eyes
people are beautiful as we can see in a lot of newspaper and magazine. However, in those eastern
countries, a beauty is the combination of dark deep black eyes, white skin color, and a long
straight black hair. The very appealing different that we can see from these culture is that people
from western culture like to have a well built body even for women. Nevertheless, most of
women in eastern culture, women is giving up the feeling of being fragile and delicate.
On the other hand, the second approaching to beauty has nothing to do with how a person
looks but instead of how a person behave, speak, and interact with people. There is an old saying
that continues advising people to not judge another based on their look but instead their
upcoming and characteristic. First, the attitude that a person act in front of other indicates a lot
about his internal beauty. There are so many people that just do not understand the important of
public image and ignore the gaze other people have for them while speaking and making so
much noise in the train. In addition, how a person is position him in public as well as private is
signifying his inner attractiveness, just simply the posture of a person sitting straight and
composing can be considering beauty in a way. Third, the interaction of people is the most
important element of how to determine a person interior beauty. For example, a teenager who
acts respectful and dutiful toward elders like giving up his seat to an elder or disable people in
public place can give people a feeling of considerate and kind.
As I have mentioned there are two ways to reveal a person’s beauty which are the outer
appearances and internal personalities, yet when one person is missing one or another type of
beauty, they are struggling to understand the real meaning of beauty and sometime lose
themselves in the process. The article “Mirror” written by Lucy Grealy reveals her own
experience on the journal of understanding beauty and losing her real self after countless of
surgeries. At the age of nine, Grealy had a jaw cancer and forced to remove the whole right side
of her jaw; as a result, her face becomes disoriented and it took about twenty years to reconstruct
her face under the outrageous remarks of some people. However, toward the end when she
finally become beautiful, she can no longer know who she is. Ultimately, Grealy emphasizes
how people in this society and culture are obsessed with outer appearance and the only thing that
they seem to care about is material stuff.
There is something that can never be change even for hundred of years have passed. The
very first impression of a person really determines how other people consider his or her beauty or
not. And what a person supposes to see about another first when they meet is their outer
appearance, not their inner characteristic. Grealy who has her jaw removed at the age of nine
become more than a stranger on the street to other people, she is something for them to gaze and
point at, not in a good way. Not only that, the nightmare that her face cause does not stop when
she went to school, she became the natural loner. Grealy has stated: “People stare at me in stores,
other children made fun of me to the point where I came to expect it constantly wherever I went.
School becomes a battleground” (Grealy, 59). On the street, in school, Grealy continuously
becomes the target of all the mean jokes and giggles around her. People do not see her for who
she is, a sweet girl, but instead she is seen as a monster, an interesting subject for the eyes. How
much hurt and depressed the author have suffered cannot be measure not because of her
appearance but the ignorance of understand of other people.
Being blind by the outer appearance, most of the student in the author’s high school did
not know the sweet and kind girl behind that disoriented face. Even though she is being treated
as something that is disgusting and eyesore, she is still considering other people before her own.
The author reveals: “‘Hey, look, it is Jerry’s girlfriend,’ they yelled when they saw me, and I felt
such shame, knowing that this was the deepest insult they could throw at Jerry.” (Grealy, 60)
why is the author feel that her being Jerry girlfriend is the “deepest insult” they could throw at
him, why it is an insult. None of them really know who she is because they have never talked to
her properly and yet they are making fun of her as if she is not even a living thing. It is not her or
Jerry that they are insulted, they are laughing at their own childish and lack of considerate. On
the other side, the author did not even mention her own feeling and anger but instead worrying
about Jerry’s feeling of being insult. Therefore, Grealy’s inner beauty has been totally ignore by
student in her school because of her outer appearance