Tired of Being Beautiful - The Role of Beauty in THOMS

I really enjoyed Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street.” I felt that it covered so many social issues such as poverty, gender, race and femininity. Esperanza is a hopeful young girl who I can really relate to. Though I am not a minority, I know how what it’s like to be poor and in living conditions that you think may define you forever. The anxiety to escape your home/hometown touches the majority of us. I thought Cisneros’ style was very unique in THOMS and her ability to stimulate all five senses in one paragraph is amazing. Though she covers and explains many social issues with perfection, one that stood out to me in this book is beauty. It seemed like every page I turned, it was mentioning beauty or makeup or femininity.

Beauty in THOMS surrounds Esperanza but she never seems to describe herself as beautiful. Even in the most ironic cases, like when Mamacita, the man across the street’s lover, arrives and “all at once she bloomed. Huge, enormous, beautiful to look at, from the salmon-pink feather on the tip of her hat down to the little rosebuds of her toes. I couldn't take my eyes off her tiny shoes” (30). In modern society, bigger women are not seen as “beautiful,” but Esperanza is infatuated with this woman and her femininity.

 Esperanza continues on beauty with “Sally, the girl with eyes like Egypt and nylons the color of smoke. The boys at school think she's beautiful because her hair is shiny black like raven feathers and when she laughs, she flicks her hair back like a satin shawl over her shoulders and laughs” (32). Esperanza describes the features of women with such flow. She depicts it to where it flows like a movie scene in my head. I picture a popular girl walking down the hall in slow motion and her flinging her hair over her shoulder and smiling. Cisneros’ ability to trigger imagery in the audience’s mind really shows in this quote. Esperanza continues, “Sally, who taught you to paint your eyes like Cleopatra? And if I roll the little brush with my tongue and chew it to a point and dip it in the muddy cake, the one in the little red box, will you teach me?” (32). The power that society gives beauty engulfs Esperanza. She longs to be as admired as Sally, which is something a lot of us can relate to. We all want to be beautiful, but the eye of the beholder will never let us fully satisfy ourselves. We want this satisfaction in life because there’s such an ease to life when you’re beautiful. When Esperanza says, “Nenny has pretty eyes and it's easy to talk that way if you are pretty” (35). I totally felt that. It is so much easier to do things if you’re pretty. I remember being Esperanza in my childhood, because at the skating rink, all the guys would come up to me and ask me if my friends were single. I was always surrounded by such pretty people and their lives (on the surface) seemed so easy because of this.

            However, there is a downfall to beauty. Beauty attracts a lot of attention and unfortunately, it’s not all good attention. At some point in life, after all of the catcalls and stares that more you feel like you’re butt-naked in public, we’re all “tired of being beautiful” (42). At some point, a creep has made one of us feel that “to be this beautiful is dangerous” (81). Cisneros really captures that uncomfortable, sickening feeling of this kind of shame. Shame that you should be beautiful and feel that way too. It was imperative for Cisneros to include this backhand of beauty to the audience to not only represent it in their society, but as a social issue as a whole.

            Overall, Cisneros created a creative, honest and captivating book that somehow touches all of our lives, despite our wealth or color. This book really speaks high volumes and I think it is a great book to pull into the classroom.