English Paper - “on Being a Cripple” and “a Woman’s Beauty”

Issue

The primary issue that has been discussed throughout both the essays revolves around the “Society”, “Women” and the “Beauty”. Nancy Mairs in her essay “On Being a Cripple” and Susan Sontag in her essay “A Woman’s Beauty”, both highlights the importance of the appearance of the women in the society. Mairs demonstrates that how she was not accepted as a woman who even met all the required standards of the beauty even before she got into the contact of the disease, and how this disease completely changed her, whereas on the other hand, Sontag highlights that the women in today’s era is “required” to be beautiful.

Author’s Argument

On Being Cripple: in this essay, the author has highlighted the physical issues that she had to face since the time she got “Crippled” in her mid-to-late twenties. The word crippled here refers to tampered and here it is used in the context of disability. However, she has not detailed any of the facts of being crippled; rather she developed an entertaining sense throughout the story to draw the attention of the reader.

She does not only provide details regarding the physical difficulties, but she has also explained the emotional hardships that she has faced. Throughout the essay, she was not at all upset about being a cripple, instead she prefers to be known as a cripple and not to be known as disabled or handicapped. The central idea behind this essay was to explain that all the people must not be judged or forced to be judged as per the same stereotypical labels, even though despite being a cripple she was able to perform all such tasks that are considered normal. The extract from the essay:

“My world has, of necessity, been circumscribed by my losses, but the terrain left me has been ample enough for me to continue many of the activities that absorb me: writing, teaching, raising children and cats and plants and snakes, reading, speaking publicly about MS and depression, even playing bridge with people patient and honourable enough to let me scatter cards every which way without sneaking a peak”

The above extract demonstrates that Mairs was involved in several different activities despite her physical conditions and the Stereotypes like being helpless or unable to live a happy normal life cannot be applied in her case.

She is suffering from the problem of MS and her life is not normal, but in any aspect, she is not helpless, weak, and inspiring. However, she has faced “attacks of violent self-loathing” due to her physical conditions. She has also highlighted that she as not popular during her school days because of her body structure, that resulted in the development of a complex about her self-alienation. However, her overall “will power” helped to regenerate a response to her MS.

A Woman’s Beauty: Put Down or Power Source?: The essay by Susan Sontag brings up a number of questions and facts that will force you to think that if the society has been fair or not? She has done a remarkable job bringing the question to mind of the reader that society has been unfair today.