Zadie Smith writes her essay about the process people take to ‘find their beach’ by moving to SoHo and how it compares to other places in her essay, “Find Your Beach’. Smith describes Manhattan and how the people who live there are ruthless because there everybody is trying to find their beach. Everyone is caught up with the idea of finding their beach that they start to become ruthless because they are too busy finding their beach, whereas when she goes back to England over the Summer, she is not trying to find her beach, but rather spend time with her children. Smith soon realizes her varying levels of happiness between Manhattan and England and states people in Manhattan find their beach “falsely but convincingly” (Levy 196). Similar to …show more content…
Strayed mentions how she does not dress for fashion, but rather function and comfort, but is nervous about impressing a man so she tries to dress in clothes that she thinks he would like. After dating her not-yet-husband, she realizes that she is not comfortable with the way she is dressing and feels their relationship i is almost mechanical because she “was projecting a slightly fraudulent image of [herself] to him instead of the actual [her]” ( Levy 206). Strayed realizes that acting like someone she is not to get her not-yet-husband to like her is ridiculous because not only is she not happy with the faux version of her, but he is too. I found this very comforting because sometimes when I meet someone new, I can try to be likable to them, and change my opinions slightly to get them to like me, which is senseless, because later on the person will realize that I am not the person I led on to be. Whereas, if I was just being myself, the we could both realize who each other really are and then that way we both would not have to act like someone we are not. Though I can sometimes struggle with being myself, I can recognize when I am doing so and try to stop impressing others by being someone I am