In American culture, aesthetic beauty, especially when it concerns women and their faces, are highly valued. In Lucy Grealy’s memoir, Autobiography of a Face, she examines and criticizes society’s excessive emphasis of impossible beauty standards, and how such ideas can negatively impact a young girl’s self-esteem. She tells the story of how her disfigurement in her lower right jaw caused by cancer brought her into an unending life of bullying, weariness from failed surgical procedures, and depression due to the instilled thought that her face needed to be fixed. Although Grealy’s physical pain was no doubt part of the cause of her distress, it is not the most painful aspect but the constant mental battles with her own identity against society.
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The first time she started to understand that she was ugly was during her middle school year when one of her friends made her realize that no it should be an obvious fact that no one one would want her (150). When she met a man named Jude, she stated that although it was a highly sexualized relationship, she was never in love with him. She was obsess with the idea of being noticed by a man, the potential that she actually meant something, so she allowed his attraction to define her. At this time, she had already partaken in a new type of surgery where they would take a chunk of her bone to be grafted instead of her tissues. The doctors claimed that this operation would be more successful because the bone would have its own blood supply to survive. She had already experience nearly thirty failed jaw reconstruction surgery due to reabsorbment- and yet, she still held on the hope that one will finally succeed and that she can finally fix her face, fix her life, fix her soul (215). Her surgeries require partial parts of herself such as the tissue or bone to be grafted as her jaw, prompting her to forcibly tolerate numerous pains and deteriorating physical body. Despite the painful memories of torture, she still ended up doing the surgery. So during this time when her face was more symmetrical, she tried dressing up more ‘like a woman’ to appeal to her boyfriend, and although she admits it was unlike her, she stated it made her feel sexy. She felt like she was worth something, that even though someone else’s tastes is what is defining her, she was okay with it because she finally fitted society’s view of beauty. After her breakup with Jude, however, she “began collecting lovers, having a series of short-term relationships that always ended” (208). Because her face was starting to shrink again, and the
The first time she started to understand that she was ugly was during her middle school year when one of her friends made her realize that no it should be an obvious fact that no one one would want her (150). When she met a man named Jude, she stated that although it was a highly sexualized relationship, she was never in love with him. She was obsess with the idea of being noticed by a man, the potential that she actually meant something, so she allowed his attraction to define her. At this time, she had already partaken in a new type of surgery where they would take a chunk of her bone to be grafted instead of her tissues. The doctors claimed that this operation would be more successful because the bone would have its own blood supply to survive. She had already experience nearly thirty failed jaw reconstruction surgery due to reabsorbment- and yet, she still held on the hope that one will finally succeed and that she can finally fix her face, fix her life, fix her soul (215). Her surgeries require partial parts of herself such as the tissue or bone to be grafted as her jaw, prompting her to forcibly tolerate numerous pains and deteriorating physical body. Despite the painful memories of torture, she still ended up doing the surgery. So during this time when her face was more symmetrical, she tried dressing up more ‘like a woman’ to appeal to her boyfriend, and although she admits it was unlike her, she stated it made her feel sexy. She felt like she was worth something, that even though someone else’s tastes is what is defining her, she was okay with it because she finally fitted society’s view of beauty. After her breakup with Jude, however, she “began collecting lovers, having a series of short-term relationships that always ended” (208). Because her face was starting to shrink again, and the