Documentary on American Beauty

It is very interesting to see what American people in today's world perceive as beautiful. Since many Americans read magazines, watch advertisements, and see celebrities, they think that beautiful reflects only how you look on the outside. Americans overlook inner beauty like personality and feelings and only care about physical looks like how skinny people are and what people wear in order to determine someone's amount of beauty. This all stems from the media. Media has a big influence on how people perceive aspects of society like beauty. If the media shows pictures of many skinny people with small clothes on then people will think of the perfect man or woman as being very skinny wearing small clothes. People will not even start a relationship with someone who is an average size and wearing the average size of clothing because they do not think that these type of people are beautiful. Thinking of the perfect man or woman for marriage relates to how people think of their own beauty. People of average size who wear average size clothing will not think that they are beautiful because they want to be the perfect man or woman. That is a problem because it is next to impossible to be the perfect man or woman. The only way to be the perfect man or woman is to become anorexic or bulimic which is terrible for one's health. Americans will try to do the impossible in order to follow the status quo with beauty.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

I learned a lot of new information from researching the book called The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. For example, I never knew that The Picture of Dorian Gray was the only novel that Oscar Wilde published until doing research. It was also very interesting for me to know that the book was banned for a long period of time because people saw references to homosexuality in it. Since homosexuality was illegal in England during this time period, it was surprising and shocking to people that somebody would write about homosexuality in a novel. In fact, Oscar Wilde was actually homosexual and had an affair with a man named Lord Alfred Douglas even though he was married to a woman named Constance Mary Lloyd. The Picture of Dorian Gray was originally published in 1890 in a magazine called Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. It was eventually revised and republished in 1891. The revised version of the book ended up having more chapters added, passages being deleted, passages being added, passages being moved, and fewer references to homosexuality. Some main themes of this book include duplicity, influence, responsibility,aestheticism, and the concept of the double life. Today, this book is highly regarded. In Ireland, The Picture of Dorian Gray was chosen as the book of 2010 for Dublin City's "One City, One Book" festival in its fifth year. Cultural events related to The Picture of Dorian Gray and Oscar Wilde were hosted in Dublin, Ireland in April 2010. There are many published editions of this book for people to read.