Oprah Through The Years

Its 645 in the morning and yet again I am getting up at what feels like the crack of dawn on a school day to get ready….and what I mean by getting ready is the usual shower, blow dry, straighten, make up, clothes and breakfast all before its time to leave at 830 AM. Some may ask why you would possibly want to get up that early on a school day before a day full of classes. Well my answer is pretty straight forward, first appearance. Ever since I was little I was taught how a woman should act, dress, and look like in order to be successful and have the fairy tale ending. For years I watched my mother wake up 2 hours before work, spend immense amount of time on her hair, makeup and forever trying to find the perfect outfit for work.

Of course shopping was a must with my mother to keep up with in styles for the season and expensive brand names were a no brainer. Only money and time could buy the best most uncomfortable shoes and clothes that the other girls envy. Hours were wasted at a hair salon getting low lights, a cut and the best products in order to style our hair just right. Its intelligible bodies at its best always giving ourselves updates on our clothes, makeup, hair and diet, we work our bodies hard to attempt to get the Shape cover body to be able to fit it into the Victoria Secret clothes in order to wear the hottest makeup and hair trends from the current issues of Cosmopolitan.

It’s a pursuit without terminus, women in general take longer to get ready and also care a lot more about the way we dress and look. Maybe it’s what we have been subjected to not only from what our mothers taught us, but what society has taught us. First appearances and always needing to look perfect is a must in order to be a successful woman with power, look at Oprah through the years. As we have spoken about in class it’s almost like construction how we walk into a room and we are read as if we were an Add in a magazine. We are secretly asking ourselves is this person cute/hot/ugly/, punk/athletic/preppy…etc.

Maybe body practices are about power, we are able to control what we are doing when we are doing it. I get up at the crack of dawn to try to look my best because I have the power to look potentially cute every morning. I have the power to get up, force myself out of bed and get ready and look presentable for the day and what comes with it. When it becomes a practice as it has now it’s almost as if a workout, I feel guilty if I do not get to it that day. I’m starting to think that women who are spending immense amounts of time and money on looking good think of it as almost like a rule of silence. We all do it, we all think about it, but we won’t admit to how much we truly care about our looks.