Essay Comparing Legacies 'And The Beauty Treatment'

Beauty is highly subjective. What might seem magnificent to one's eye, may be unpleasing to a different individual. How one sees himself/herself is a key factor to how they live their life in many cases. This theme shows through in many stories throughout chapter 5 in Legacies by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt and Lynne Crockett, including “The Beauty Treatment” by Stacey Richter and “The Story of My Body” by Judith Ortiz Cofer. Both stories are based on adolescent girls and their appearances. “The Beauty Treatment” written by Stacey Richter is about a girl obsessed over her good looks and the materialistic objects in her possession. One day her “best friend”, Katie, also called “The Bitch”, slices open the narrator's face with a razor with no warning, this ruins her beautiful looks. The narrator tries to fill this hole with even more objects and hoping The Bitch suffers more than herself. Judith Ortiz Cofer wrote “The Story of My Body”, which is about a girl (the narrator) who struggles with her body image throughout growing up. She points out all of …show more content…
The narrator in “The Beauty Treatment” never fully accepts The Bitch’s apology. She hopes The Bitch suffers as much as possible because she took away one of the most important things to her-her beauty. The narrator runs away from her to problem to new things, “...no matter what I had, I could not have enough. Not only did I deserve this, I deserved this and more. I had suffered, and every available style of Swatch would bring relief” (page 64). However, the shopping could not bring relief, which is why the narrator could not have enough because no amount of clothes would fix her problem. In “The Story of My Body” the narrator was beaten up several times due to her apperance of being a minority, she runs away from her problem when her family moves to a different state so she can attend another school (page