Custom «Beauty and Life» Essay Paper Sample

Everyone wants to live a long happy life. We take up multiple jobs and work for long hours just to ensure that we have enough money that will enable us to live the kind of lifestyles that we want to. Despite all this we all have duties and responsibilities that we all have to perform and we all need to play our part in the society and family setup. Men and women have had roles that had been assigned to them and there used to be cut out roles and responsibilities that each gender had to adhere to. Men were the people tasked with the responsibility of looking for the money to support their family and thus they were the tough people who would go out and take up menial jobs for pay. They were also the caretakers and security for the family thus had to be home at night to fend for their families. Women on the other hand were the caretakers of the home and were supposed to have babies, nurse them and do the washing, cooking and cleaning in the home setup. This setup worked and for the longest time it was what defined the perfect society. Modernization started and this came with its own changes. First these roles started to be broken and in no time there were new rules that defined men and women.

The society has expectations that define men and women and these are what many of us strive to adhere to in order to fit into the society. No one wants to be unfashionable and this has made image the number one factor that defines who we are. Money is also a major factor since we all want to have nice things and this will all be determined by the amount of money we have and our spending power. The need for money and financial power played a major role in the diversification of women and gender roles. Women want to be financially independent and stable and this has pushed them to take up jobs and careers that were earlier reserved for men. Men and women today fight it out in the office and on construction sites, on playing fiends and in the Olympics, on the sea and in the sky, practically there are no borders anymore to limit what women can and cannot do. The only stable factor throughout all this is the fact that despite all of these responsibilities, women are still expected to look good and keep their homes beautiful and cozy.

Women love shopping, whether it is for household goods and foodstuff for the family or for their clothes and other accessories. There are numerous clothing lines dedicated to exclusively dress the feminine figure. Despite of all the responsibilities, women are expected to always look beautiful and presentable. They work all day long and some even have multiple jobs, they get pregnant and nurse children and still entitled to ensure that the house is clean and tidy and there is hot food on the table at all meal times. For those who seek for assistance in the home, the society dubs them lazy and they are castigated for letting other people take care of their homes. Men on the hand enjoy having the women assist in bringing in money to the home and despite of knowing how tired the women get during the day they still want to only rest when they get home. Women have so many responsibilities that put a lot of weight on them but still the society expects them to maintain a perfect image on the face of things.

There is a lot of talk about women being obsessed with clothes, shoes, accessories and beauty. But where does all this talk come from? It comes from the society. Who is the society? It is me and you. This means that all this pressure on women comes from us. Hollywood and all the glossy magazines have exerted even more pressure on how women should look and behave. Long straight hair has been the look that the glamorous women sport and they always have on them the best clothes and shoes. Their nails are always perfect and they walk around with their shoulders held up high with their perfect facial features. This is the image of a perfect woman and we are al expected to adhere to it in order to fit into the societal image. Despite all this, women are always being criticized for spending so much money on clothes and other accessories and on their hair and makeup. Some even go to the extent of having their bodies altered through the use of chemicals and even life threatening surgeries to come as close as possible to looking perfect. Botox is the new way to go despite of all the health risks associated with the procedure. A look around the streets today will reveal a scenario where women walk around with clothes that were at one time unfathomable and they have on shoes with heels that leave them with back pain and are the source of numerous injuries that could have been avoided. That is the look that the society wants of women thus they go to any length to achieve it.

The saddest part is that even girls as young as five already have a clear indicator as to what they want to look like. They miss out on important milestones in their young lives looking for that image that will make them the little stars they want to be. Young girls starve themselves almost to death to remain skinny since having any body fat will make them fat, and this is unacceptable. Young men will want to be associated with only the pretty girls thus all the girls will do anything to be pretty. In the end the same society dishes out ugly words for the skinny girls and those that spend all their money on clothes and makeup. It is a very difficult situation for women. Juggling demanding careers, maintaining healthy homes and at the same time always looking perfect and having sexy bodies is no easy task for anyone. Women are not action figures and as such sometimes all this pressure does wear them down. We as a society need to understand that all the perfect women we see in the glossy magazines and Hollywood who seem to lead the perfect lives and always look fabulous and glamorous have numerous professional assistants who assist them in maintaining this look. Ordinary women cannot possibly compete with that. It is time women stopped putting so much emphasis on the image they portray to the society, instead we should all be happy in our skins and enjoy our lives the way we are. Women of all shapes and colors should be celebrated not judged and scorned for the way they look or the clothes they wear, being a woman is already tough enough.