The Poem In Jane Richter's 'Beauty Treatment'

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“Post Beauty Treatment” “Beauty Treatment” is an ironic testament to the lives and expectations of girls and women, particularly girls of a certain social class. They are raised for the sole purpose of getting their MRS degree from college, and nothing more. To do this, they are adorned in the best clothing, “all the latest stuff from the stores,” also the goal to “marry a Jewish doctor,” where they can look forward to “live bored and frustrated in the suburbs.” What was seen by everyone as catastrophic to the narrator, “The Accident” of having her face marred and her marriageable viability tarnished, in fact liberated the narrator.
The narrator’s life changed walking down the hallway that day at school, taste of blood in her mouth, as she …show more content…

The narrator implies Kate was changing her looks, speech and her outlook of life. Was the Kate acting out in regard of never getting attention from her parents or just evil. Her brother and her dog dwelt with the repercussions of her actions mostly, flashing her forbidden fruit to her schizophrenic brother watching him scream as he runs away. The narrator gives the reader an indication of Kates family being” dysfunctional “and battered with lack of empathy. Blackie the dog only wanted love which she showed occasionally, all while he was the only thing that was consistent in Kates life, after Blackie died, that’s when the transformation of becoming a “home girl “begin.
So, the narrator lost the chance to be the beauty queen, instead she became “a superhero.” She got to break the mold through the magic and miracles she only connected with Katie. Although the reader never gets to learn Katie’s side, in truth, she did the narrator the best favor of her life. She now gets to live a life separate from just being a small “s” attached to her future husband’s name. Now, she can look in a mirror and be “radiant” instead of just “actually

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