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Beloved Women Research Paper

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Women in our Society Women in our society today more than ever are pressured to be “perfect.” What our society has learned to accept for what the definition of perfect is has become distorted. We are bombarded daily with television ads, magazine covers, billboards which put fictional ideas into our heads of what a pretty woman should be. Most woman think what makes a woman attractive is tanned skin, long hair, slim waste, long legs, and symmetrical facial features. Women need to realize that nobody is perfect; our flaws make us the special women we are. In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, Baby Guggs preaches at a Black congregation stating, “Here … in this place, we flesh; Flesh that weeps, laughs, flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love …show more content…
Her husband seems to view Elisa from the inside, not what she looks like. His compliments towards her seem to be based on the type of person she is not the person she looks like. Her daily outfit is described as “her gardening costume, a man’s black hat pulled low down over her eyes, clod-hopper shoes,” as if she is trying to hide herself. When Elisa is getting ready to go out to dinner with her husband she “scrubbed herself with a little block of pumice, legs and thighs, loins and chest and arms, until her skin was scratched and red” as if she were trying to “scrub” the manliness off of her that she saw. When getting dressed for the night she wore her newest and nicest clothes which she thought to be the “symbol of her prettiness.” Elisa believes that she is not pretty until she has the nicest and newest thing on her body. When Elisa is in her day to day routine, she struggles to see who she really is. Elisa wants her husband to tell her she is beautiful but cannot see when he is trying because she cannot first accept her own appearance. Elisa was unable to accept anyone’s love, especially her own husbands because she was incapable of loving

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