“A Necessary Vanity” Essay
In October we read the article “A Necessary Vanity” by Alexander Edmonds, in which Edmonds discusses the phenomenon in Brazilian culture in which cosmetic surgery, purely for appearance’s sake, is the new norm. The commonplace of cosmetic surgery in Brazil is a result of their free healthcare which covers the surgery as well as their cultural view which dos not condemn the practice.
In class we discussed this Brazilian beauty ideal and beauty practices as it compared to the United States, and the culture we were studying in our studio class. I was studying the Mursi tribe of Ethiopia. We also compared the modern ideals of self esteem associated with the cosmetic surgery practice in contrast to the old fashioned ideals of strength of character. We were asked to find a photo from Brazil, the US, and our 3 culture (Mursi) that would help us to support a thesis, in which we would claim whether or not this Brazilian set of ideals shows a departure from old fashioned ways. I argued that the very traditional Mursi tribe, which is fixated on body alteration as beauty, showed that these ideals have been prevalent for a long time. The US also supports this idea.
I chose these 3 images to support my thesis:
In the feedback I received, my images and their descriptions relied to heavily on the text in the images rather than the formal details of the photos. I responded to this criticism by changing my example of the American view of body alteration to a photo of Renee Zellweger, in which she is picture before and after her speculated plastic surgery. In my description of this image I was better able to rely on formal details of the photo of prove my point, rather than the text from the captions.
In this assignment I believe I demonstrated process in my writing as I developed my idea from the first assignment to the last. I also used feedback to help me improve upon previous work.