Defining Beauty Through Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face

The Oxford Dictionary defines beauty as a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form , that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight (beauty). In Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy expands this translation by exploring her own interpretation of beauty throughout the various stages of her life. As she examines life before her diagnosis, she mentions flyspeck about beauty as a factor in her development. She was a tomboy par faithfulness, more concerned with play than lusting after David Cassidy (15).While Grealy is subjected to extensive surgeries and chemotherapy she continues to be unconcerned with appearances, though she was still safekeeping myself ignorant of the details of my appearance, of the specific logic of it (104). She was aware of her looks from the taunts and teases of classmates, but remained intentionally unable to judge herself with the approximate eyes of post-pubescence. It wasnt until Grealy experienced her first Halloween that she real ized just what an impact her association of beauty had on her.Under the covert of her Eskimo costume, she realized just how meek Id become, how self-conscious I was about my face until now that it was obscured (120). As eon goes on, other people seem to compensate for Grealys lack of concern with her odd appearance. Her mother purchases turtlenecks in an driving to alleviate attention from the scar. As puberty reached her peers, she accepted that she would never have a boyfriend, that no oneness would ever be interested in me in that way (159). Grealy accepted ideal of beauty, throughout her adolescence, concerns just the opposite of what appearance she could hope to achieve. This is a feeling that can be echoed through the hallways of every high gear school across America, but strikes particular chord in Grealys psyche. It is not until reaching college that she feels fully prospering in her outward appearance. Sarah Lawrence was a campus where the students were wrapped up i n asserting their own individuality and crotchety aesthetic, and Grealy thrived in this environment.Grealys personal definition of beauty cemented itself in individuality, as she grew unconcerned with the frivolous nature of the somatogenetic aspect of it. She concludes this beautifully by writing that society tells us again and again that we can or so be ourselves by acting and looking like someone else, only to leave our original faces throne to turn into ghosts that will inevitably resent and haunt us. (222) Word count 414 Works Cited Grealy, Lucy. Autobiography of a Face. New York Perennial, 2003. Print. Beauty. Def. 1. Oxford Dictionary. 2012. Web.