Human Interest

Twain’s most devastating piece of satire: “The United States of Lyncherdom.” "Let us import American missionaries from China, and send them into the lynching field." 

As with much of Twain’s writing, the tone of “The United States of Lyncherdom” is facetious, but its substance dead serious. After reading the horrific account of a 1901 lynching in Missouri, Twain sat down at his typewriter and proposed a novel solution to America’s most ghastly form of mob justice: encouraging Christian missionaries to spread “civilization” to the American South.

Bliss wrote him back, as Twain explained to a friend, to say that if they publish that book, he wouldn’t have even half a friend left in the South.

Mark Twainwasextremely sensitive about risking all that he had earned, the fame and the popularity and the financial success, by entertaining his audience. So he was always worried that he could lose all of that very quickly if he said something that would offend rather than entertain that audience. What he said was, ‘I have told the truth too plainly in that piece. And that’s something no man can afford to do until I am dead.’”

In Venezuela, women are confronted with a culture of increasingly enhanced physiques fueled by beauty pageants and plastic surgery. The man at the beginning says that inner beauty does not exist and that's something that women who are not pretty invented just to justify themselves. This man happens to be the leader of the Miss Venezuela pageant. Another interesting thing he tells us is that in the rules of this contest, the girls don't have to be completely natural. They just have to be beautiful, but where that beauty comes from doesn't matter. For many people in Venezuela, beauty means perfection. Even though Venezuela's economic struggles mount, the search for an idealized and often inflated figure continues. Mannequins are being pumped up to match their outsized human counterparts. One of the workers at the clothing store says that when they had less developed mannequins, they sold less. So not only were mannequins being portrayed as busty because it was the ideal image, but because it also made them more money.

Venezuela added a whole new level to the unrealistic beauty standards that mess with some females minds. Putting these mannequins in numerous stores is just sickening. At least in the United States when we go to the mall, we don’t have a model staring us down (unless you’re in Victoria Secret). Yet, what is even worse is that the sales actually went up in one of the stores that introduced these mannequins according to the cashier. The only heartening bit of this clip was the cashier who actually went against societal norms by holding inner beauty above outer beauty.

A large part of me can’t grasp why more people don’t believe in inner beauty. As the 28 year old who looked like she was about to have surgery aptly stated, it is all due to “social pressure.” Yet, the last women interviewed about her body image caused by “social pressure” said she will never be “fully satisfied.” In fact, she already wants to get another boob job. If one realizes she will never be happy trying to chase the ridiculous standards of beauty, then why do it? The pressure will never get any better if you’re unfilled to begin with and going along the same path again is just nonsense. Yet, none of those women seemed to really ponder the norm. It’s why I wasn’t even remotely amazed that when asked “where this standard of beauty came from,” the male hand an answer and the female didn’t. At the same time though my parents raised me to understand there is more to outer beauty. So it is easy for me to pick apart their logic partly due to my social environment.     

I think it is amazing to think how much one person can stand behind the scenes and yet play such a huge role in how a whole country sets its standards for beauty. I feel sorry for the women of Venezuela, they are being sold a lie.

All you need to know is that it is John Oliver....he's funny.

This is a pretty funny clip.

THIS is why we take map tests.

Yet another resource to add to my "this is why we take map quizzes" lecture at the beginning of the semester!!

I like the 'not that hard, though' tag.